[LIBRARY    I 
UNIVERSOVOF 
CAUfOKNIA 
SAN  DIEGO      5 


3  1822  01169  7778 


WASHINGTON    IRVING 


AMERICAN  AUTHORS 


FOR 


YOUNG    FOLKS 


BY 
AMANDA  B   HARRIS 

Author  of 

Wild  Flowers  and  Where  they  Grow 
Field,  Wood,  and  Meadow  Rambles 
Dooryard  Folks 

and  others 


BOSTON 
D    LOTHROP   COMPANY 

FRANKLIN   AND   HAWLEY   STREETS 


COPYRIGHT  1887 

BY 
D  LOTHROP  COMPANY 


CONTENTS. 

PACK. 

I.    WASHINGTON  IRVING n 

II.    JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER     ....  29 

III.  WILLIAM  HICKLING  PRESCOTT     ...  49 

IV.  RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON      ....  69 
V.    NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE      ....  87 

VI.    HARRIET  BEECHER  STOWE    ....  107 

VII.    ALICE  AND  PHCEBE  GARY      .        .        .        .  125 

VIII.     BAYARD  TAYLOR 141 

IX.    HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU,  AND  OTHER  "  OUT- 
OF-DOOR  "  WRITERS     .        .       .        .163 

X.     FRANCIS  PARKMAN    ..'....  185 

XI.    GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS    ....  207 

XII.    DONALD  GRANT  MITCHELL   ....  227 

XIII.  "  H.  H."  AND  OTHERS 243 

XIV.  JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL       ....  265 


PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR 
YOUNG   FOLKS. 


WASHINGTON    IRVING. 

LET  us  suppose,"  as  that  charming  story-teller, 
Annie  Keary,  used  to  begin,  "let  us  sup 
pose  "  that  these  young  people  have  never  read 
Washington  Irving,  or  never  read  him  except  in 
school-book  "  exercises."  There  they  may  have  had 
a  page  or  two  out  of  Rip  Van  Winkle ;  perhaps  the 
ludicrous  description  of  Ichabod  Crane,  his  school 
and  his  horse ;  possibly  a  mutilated  chapter  from 
the  Alhambra — just  enough  to  give  a  taste,  yet 
just  enough  to  spoil  the  subject. 

But  do  they  really  know  Rip,  and  his  dog  Wolf  ? 
Poor  vagabond  Rip  with  his  twenty  years'  sleep  ! 
ii 


12         PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

If  not,  they  have  missed  one  of  the  masterpieces 
of  English  prose,  not  a  sentence  of  which  could  be 
spared.  Some  things  are  simply  perfect,  complete, 
all  right  just  as  they  stand,  so  that 

One  shade  the  more,  one  ray  the  less 
Would  half  impair  the  nameless  grace, 

and  this  is  of  the  happy  number — an  inspiration. 
Nor  is  there  anything  to  be  taken  from  or  added 
to  the  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow.  Have  you,  my 
young  people,  read  it  as  it  stands — all  about  the 
perturbations  and  whimsicalities  of  pedagogue  Icha- 
bod,  and  that  distracting  piece  of  naughtiness, 
Katrina  Van  Tassel?  Have  you  ever  tried  to 
imagine  Sleepy  Hollow,  that  drowsy  place,  immortal 
valley  on  the  Hudson  that  will  be  famous  as  long 
as  American  literature  lasts  ?  or,  in  your  "  mind's 
eye  "  have  you  seen  the  queer,  gabled,  Dutch  houses 
of  old  Knickerbocker  New  York,  in  the  days  of  the 
renowned  Wouter  Van  Twiller  ?  where  the  burgher 
used  to  sit  "  on  the  bench  at  the  door  of  his  white 
washed  house,"  under  the  sycamore  or  willow  and 
smoke  the  sultry  afternoon  through,  "listening  to 


WASHINGTON    IRVING.  13 

the  clucking  of  his  hens,  the  cackling  of  his  geese, 
and  the  sonorous  grunting  of  his  swine,"  where, 
"  the  grass  grew  quietly  in  the  highway  —  the  bleat 
ing  sheep  and  frolicsome  calves  sported  about  the 
verdant  ridge  where  now  the  Broadway  loungers 
take  their  morning  stroll." 

And  have  you  been  in  the  Alhambra,  and  heard 
the  drip  of  the  fountain  in  the  court  of  that  beauti 
ful  Morisco  palace,  while  you  listened  to  legends  of 
Granada  till  the  streets  seemed  alive  with  Moorish 
warriors,  and  the  past  of  five  centuries  ago  came 
back?  If  not,  you  do  not  know  Irving;  for  it  is 
Dutch  life  on  the  Hudson  and  in  New  Amsterdam, 
and  the  stories  of  Moorish  ascendency  and  of  con 
quest  in  Spain,  which  most  truly  represent  him. 

Irving's  subjects  can  be  put  easily  into  groups, 
with  few  exceptions;  and  any  one  who  would 
thoroughly  read  him,  can  take  his  books  in  that 
way. 

It  would  hardly  be  worth  your  while  to  spare  the 
time  for  the  Salmagundi  papers,  which  were  the 
earliest  he  wrote ;  and  you  could  make  a  long  skip 
over  years  and  space,  as  well  as  titles,  to  Spain, 


14        PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

and  begin  there.  So  you  come  at  once  to  some  of 
his  best  work,  to  be  sure;  but  what  better  starting 
place,  for  there  you  have  several  volumes  which 
belong  together  and  make  a  brilliant  period  in 
romantic  history. 

So  Spain  be  it  then ;  and  first,  Legends  of  the 
Conquest  of  Spain,  then,  in  this  order,  although  it  is 
not  the  one  in  which  they  were  written,  Moorish 
Chronicles,  Tales  of  the  Alhambra,  Chronicles  of  the 
Conquest  of  Granada.  By  that  time  you  will  be 
steeped  in  romantic  adventure  by  land,  and  will  be 
ready  for  the  Life  of  Columbus,  and  then  for  Spanish 
Voyages  of  Discovery,  which  come  right  along  chron 
ologically. 

Of  the  Spanish  books,  the  Columbus  was  the  first 
written.  The  author  had  already  won  fame  when 
in  1826  he  made  his  temporary  home  in  Madrid, 
and  with  abundance  of  public  documents  and  pri 
vate  manuscripts  at  hand,  including  the  archives 
of  the  Columbus  family,  prepared  the  life  of  the 
great  navigator,  making  the  only  full  account  there 
is  in  English,  with  all  the  charm  of  Irving's  incom 
parable  style. 


WASHINGTON    IRVING.  15 

This  book  hath  Kinship  with  the  epic  old, 
That  sings  of  Ithacus,  the  searcher  bold  : 
The  Homer  touch  —  the  purple  light  is  here, 
That  makes  men  heroes,  heroes  gods  appear ! 

What  a  happy  inspiration  was  that  which  came  to 
him  of  writing  it !  for  out  of  it  grew  all  the  others. 
He  had  a  great  deal  of  sentiment  and  romance 
about  him,  and  that  was  the  country  of  all  the 
world  to  fascinate  him ;  and  the  more  he  wrote  of 
Spain,  the  more  the  witchery  of  the  subject  took 
hold  of  him.  Happy  inspiration  in  its  results  to 
us  and  to  all  future  readers  and  travellers.  He 
enriched  our  literature  with  the  treasures  he 
brought  forth,  and  cast  such  a  spell  over  the 
country  itself  that  people  from  all  lands  where  his 
name  is  known  visit  the  Alhambra,  because  by  the 
magic  of  his  genius,  that  old  castelated  palace  has 
become  consecrated  with 

The  light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land. 

He  chose  a  period  rich  in  romantic  episodes  and 
brilliant  deeds,  when  "  every  man  lived  with  sword 
in  hand,"  and  there  was  "  scarcely  a  commanding 


1 6        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

cliff  or  hill-top  but  had  its  castle,"  and  gave  us  the 
chronicles  of  the  Conquest  of  Granada,  which  he  is 
said  to  have  himself  regarded  as  almost  the  best 
of  all  he  had  written,  when  in  the  maturity  of  his 
powers  and  before  the  fire  of  enthusiasm  had  begun 
to  die  out ;  he  was  aglow  with  his  subject,  as  a 
writer  should  be,  full  of  it,  living  while  he  wrote 
"  in  a  world  of  dreams."  It  is  a  picturesque  book ; 
one  for  boys  to  revel  in,  with  its  alarms  and 
tumults,  its  cavalcades  of  Moorish  warriors,  its 
drums  and  trumpets,  banners  and  glitter  of  arms ; 
the  clang  of  weapons,  the  tramp  of  mailed  men,  the 
neighing  and  clattering  of  steeds,  the  sounds  of 
war,  of  triumph,  are  heard  along  its  pages ;  one 
sees  the  mountain  defiles,  the  city  with  its  Moorish 
architecture,  the  plains  where  armies  meet,  Fer 
dinand  and  Isabella  in  royal  state,  the  last  Moorish 
king,  Saracen  and  Christian,  cavalier  and  monk  — 
what  pageants,  what  splendor  and  stir,  what 
pictures,  what  an  unfolding  of  events  ! 

I  come  now,  by  this  arrangement  (which  you 
understand  is  purely  arbitrary,  but  which  seems  to 
me  a  convenient  one  for  you),  to  the  chief  biog- 


WASHINGTON    IRVING.  17 

raphies ;  Mahomet  and  his  Successors,  which  does 
not  profess  to  do  anything  more  than  put  into 
handy  volume  shape  the  facts  and  legends  about 
the  prophet ;  the  Life  of  Oliver  Goldsmith,  one  of 
the  most  captivating  of  books,  to  which  Irving 
gave  "as  graphic  a  style,"  he  said,  as  he  could 
command,  being  himself  in  love  with  his  subject 
—  a  rarely  attractive  subject,  too, was  warm-hearted, 
homely,  ungainly,  thriftless,  amiable  "  Goldy,"  poor 
Goldy !  with  his  buoyancy,  his  haps  and  mishaps, 
his  improvidence,  his  irresponsibility,  his  wander 
ing  life,  his  impulses  that  were  often  right  but  as 
likely  to  be  wrong — was  there  ever  such  another, 
such  a  luckless  man,  but  thrice  fortunate  in  the 
gentle  and  genial  humorist  who  wrote  his  life ; 
and  third,  Irving's  last  work,  on  which  he  was 
engaged  for  years,  broken  by  many  interruptions 
of  ill-health  and  a  long  absence  in  Europe,  the 
Life  of  Washington,  full  of  incident,  and  altogether 
a  good  thing,  though  without  the  flashes  of  genius 
of  some  of  his  earlier  productions.  - 

Still  another  group  —  his  western  books,  made, 
says  some  one,  "  for  the  market,"  but  capital  read- 


l8        PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

ing  for  all  that :  A  Tour  on  the  Prairies,  Astoria, 
and  The  Adventures  of  Captain  Bonneville.  It  was 
in  1832  that  he  took  his  trip,  and  wrote  about  it 
graphically  —  he  could  not  have  done  otherwise 
—  then,  under  the  second  title,  a  history  of  the 
fur  trade  which  has  all  the  elements  for  a  story, 
and  last,  the  adventures  of  a  French  soldier,  Bonne 
ville  who  became  a  famous  hunter  and  trapper 
and  spent  three  years  among  or  beyond  the  Rocky 
Mountains  prior  to  1835. 

But  he  might  have  written  all  these  and  yet 
would  not  have  been  in  the  sense  that  he  now  is, 
our  Irving,  but  for  the  Mynheers,  Rip,  Ichabod, 
Sleepy  Hollow,  Communipan,  Mannahata,  Wol- 
fert's  Roost  and  the  Dutch  traditions  belonging  to 
them.  Here  he  is  purely  American,  without  an 
imitator,  for  after  his  Knickerbocker  and  kindred 
papers,  who  so  presumptuous  as  to  attempt  to  fol 
low  ?  Full  of  "  local  color,"  as  artists  say,  he  has 
made  that  one  portion  of  our  country  classic  ground. 
The  Hudson  River  valley  is  so  full  of  Irving  that 
not  a  traveller  can  pass  that  way  without  being  re 
minded  of  him. 


WASHINGTON   IRVING.  19 

Next  after  the  Salmagundi  Papers  (which  have 
that  admirable  sketch,  "  The  Little  Man  in  Black  "), 
he  published  in  1809,  being  then  twenty-six  years 
old,  that  masterly  piece  of  humorous  writing,  as 
original  as  it  is  whimsical,  Diedrich  Knickerbock 
er's  History  of  New  York.  It  is  too  wordy,  and 
the  humor  is  sometimes  broad,  but  irresistibly 
droll  and  full  of  merriment  from  beginning  to  end. 
Fancy  the  wicked  enjoyment  Irving  must  have  had 
in  describing  those  old  Dutch  worthies,  like  Wouter 
Van  Twiller,  who  "  conceived  every  object  on  so 
comprehensive  a  scale  that  he  had  not  room  in  his 
head  to  turn  it  over  and  examine  both  sides  of  it, 
so  that  he  always  remained  in  doubt,  merely  in 
consequence  of  the  magnitude  of  his  ideas,"  who 
had  lived  in  the  world  for  years  "  without  feeling 
the  least  curiosity  to  know  whether  the  sun  revolved 
round  it,  or  it  round  the  sun."  Over  the  queer 
doings  and  thunderings,  the  rollicking  life  of  those 
smoking,  eating,  drinking,  dozing  Dutch  founders 
of  New  Amsterdam  Sir  Walter  Scott  said  he  laughed 
till  his  sides  ached. 

Ten  years  later  came  into  print  the  first  part  of 


20       PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

The  Sketch-Book,  made  up  of  refined  essays,  which 
at  once  brought  him  fame  in  England,  but "  floated," 
as  one  writer  says,  by  "  Rip  Van  Winkle,"  and 
"  The  Legend  of  Sleepy  Hollow."  He  further  says 
that  if  in  the  changes  that  may  come  "  the  bulk  of 
Irving's  works  shall  go  out  of  print,  a  volume  made 
up  of  his  Knickerbocker  history  and  the  legends 
relating  to  the  region  of  New  York  and  the  Hud 
son  would  survive  as  long  as  anything  that  has 
been  produced  in  this  country." 

For  aught  we  know,  that  story  of  Rip  is,  in  some 
form,  as  old  as  the  world ;  for  similar  traditions  of 
long  sleep  and  awakening  to  strangest  of  surprises 
are  in  oriental  and  in  classic  literature  and  may  be  in 
the  folk-lore  of  all  nations  —  but  what  a  use  he  made 
of  it !  And  you  know  how  Joe  Jefferson  has  person 
ated  the  character  —  I  hardly  dare  venture  to  guess 
how  many  times.  Several  years  after  the  death  of 
Irving,  it  was  dramatized  by  Dion  Boucicault,  who 
said  to  the  actor,  "  I  would  prefer  to  start  him  in 
the  play  as  a  young  scamp  —  thoughtless,  gay,  just 
such  a  curly-headed  fellow  as  all  the  village  girls 
would  love  and  the  children  and  dogs  would  run 


WASHINGTON    IRVING.  21 

after ;  "  and  he  did,  though  at  first  Jefferson  "  threw 
up  his  hands  in  despair  "  at  the  new  idea.  Boucicault 
did  not  call  it  much  of  a  literary  production  and 
said  when  it  was  done,  "  It  is  a  poor  thing,  Joe." 
He  replied,  "Well,  it  is  good  enough  for  me." 
And  it  was  a  hit.  What  houses  have  laughed  and 
wept  over  it,  and  how  many  hearts  have  been 
thrilled  by  that  one  question,  "  Are  we  so  soon  for 
got  when  we  are  gone  ? " 

Before  Washington  Irving  we  had  no  American 
literature  ;  writers,  it  is  true,  but  he  was  the  first 
to  make  it  known  abroad  if  he  may  not  indeed  be 
said  to  have  begun  to  create  it.  His  style  had 
a  quality  which  at  once  commanded  attention. 
To  see  in  what  that  literary  excellence  consisted 
let  us  take  at  random  a  passage  out  of  Rip  Van 
Winkle ;  this  : 

In  a  long  ramble  of  the  kind,  on  a  fine  autumnal  day,  Rip 
had  unconsciously  scrambled  to  one  of  the  highest  parts  of 
the  Kaatskill  mountains.  He  was  after  his  favourite  sport  of 
squirrel-shooting,  and  the  still  solitudes  had  echoed  and  re 
echoed  with  the  reports  of  his  gun.  Panting  and  fatigued, 
he  threw  himself,  late  in  the  afternoon,  on  a  green  knoll  cov- 


22        PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR  YOUNG   FOLKS. 

ered  with  mountain  herbage,  that  crowned  the  brow  of  a 
precipice.  From  an  opening  between  the  trees,  he  could 
overlook  all  the  lower  country  for  many  a  mile  of  rich  wood 
land.  He  saw  at  a  distance  the  lordly  Hudson,  far,  far  be 
low  him,  moving  on  its  silent  but  majestic  course,  with  the 
reflection  of  a  purple  cloud,  or  the  sail  of  a  lagging  bark, 
here  and  there  sleeping  on  its  glossy  bosom,  and  at  last  los 
ing  itself  in  the  blue  highlands. 

It  is  a  bit  of  simple  description,  nothing  more, 
but  it  tells  a  great  deal  in  few  words  and  fitting. 
Take  it  apart,  analyze  it,  define  the  words,  mark 
well  the  construction  and  relations,  and  see  if  it 
could  be  improved,  if  anything  could  be  spared. 
It  looks  like  an  easy  thing  to  do  to  write  in  that 
style,  but  try  it,  and  you  will  find  that  you  are 
baffled,  that  there  is  a  subtle  something  which  will 
elude  you ;  the  words  and  sentences  will,  under 
your  hand,  become  provokingly  unmanageable  ; 
you  will  find  it  exceedingly  difficult  to  say  just 
what  you  wish  to  in  just  the  right  words,  no  others, 
no  more,  and  no  less. 

Tffere  is  a  fitness,  grace,  dignity,  refinement  and 
elegance  about  the  style  of  Washington  Irving 


WASHINGTON    IRVING.  23 

which  have  always  been  recognized  and  admired. 
It  is  true  that  it  lacks  in  nerve  and  virile  force  when 
brought  into  comparison  with  some  modern  writers. 
One  page  of  Carlyle  has  more  brawn  and  muscle, 
more  "  attack  "  in  it,  so  to  speak,  than  the  longest 
essay  that  Irving  ever  wrote;  nevertheless,  it  is 
not  without  power  of  its  own  —  as  in  Bryant's 
highly  finished  verse,  the  polishing  has  not  worn  it 
away  to  insipidity  ;  no  one  feels  the  lack  of  vigor, 
and  all  do  feel  its  charm.  It  is  the  language  of  a 
cultivated  gentleman  whose  habit  of  thought  was 
that  of  a  gentleman,  of  one  accustomed  to  think  in 
pure,  good  English  as  well  as  speak  and  write  it  — 
indeed  the  latter  would  follow  as  a  matter  of  course. 
In  1835  the  North  American  Review  pronounced 
him  "  the  best  living  writer  of  English  prose." 

You  will  notice  another  thing,  and  that  is  that 
he  likes  to  leave  a  pleasant  impression ;  unlike 
some  authors,  who  make  you  uncomfortable,  he 
•pleases  and  entertains.  Yet  he  was  never  sanguine 
about  the  result  of  his  writing,  being  so  sensitive 
that  a  word  of  adverse  criticism  "  upset "  him  for 
days ;  he  was  always  inclined  to  depreciate  himself, 


24        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

was  capricious  about  his  fits  of  working,  and  had 
long  periods  of  feeling  incompetent  to  do  anything. 
When  The  Sketch-Book  came  into  print,  it  met  with 
such  success  that  he  was  fairly  overpowered  and 
was  afraid  he  could  never  do  so  well  again  ;  and 
yet  that  was  almost  at  the  beginning  of  his  literary 
career,  and  besides  all  the  books  named  above,  he 
afterwards  wrote  of  the  essay-ish  or  story  kind, 
The  Tales  of  a  Traveller,  Wolferfs  Roost,  Abbotsford 
and  Newstead  Abbey,  the  collection  called  Crayon 
Miscellany,  and  those  flattering  impressions  of  Eng 
lish  life  in  a  country  home,  Bracebridge  Hall,  told 
in  a  manner  which  constantly  reminds  one  of  Addi- 
son  and  the  Sir  Roger  de  Coverley  papers. 

Washington  Irving  was  born  in  New  York  City, 
April  3,  1783,  and  as  a  boy  is  described  as  "hand 
some,  tender-hearted,  truthful,  susceptible,"  a 
"  dawdler  in  routine  studies,"  but,  boy-like,  fond 
of  Pilgrim's  Progress,  Robinson  Crusoe,  Sinbad, 
Orlando  Furioso,  and  a  devourer  of  "  books  of  voy 
ages  and  travels,"  growing  up  so  delicate  that  at 
twenty-one  he  was  sent  for  his  health  to  Europe, 
where  he  picked  up  much  general  information  and 


WASHINGTON    IRVING.  2$ 

knowledge  of  the  world,  all  of  which  came  into  use 
when  he  began  to  write.  He  became  a  great 
favorite  in  society,  had  eyes  that  laughed  and  a 
smile  which  no  one  could  resist ;  and  his  winning 
qualities  stayed  by  him  through  life. 

He  was  away  two  years,  went  abroad  again  in 
1815  for  a  short  sojourn,  but  remained  seventeen, 
then  came  home  to  settle  down  as  he  hoped,  but 
in  1842  was  appointed  Minister  to  Spain  and  spent 
the  next  four  years  at  the  court  of  Madrid.  The 
story  of  his  life  is  too  well  known  to  need  telling. 

Home  once  more,  and  for  good,  with  his  house 
full  of  nieces  and  other  near  relatives,  at  his  "  dear, 
little  Sunnyside,"  the  Dutch  stone  house  over-run 
with  ivy  from  a  slip  brought  from  fair  Melrose,  a 
poet's  retreat,  now  hallowed  and  historic,  where 
honored  and  beloved  he  spent  his  remaining  years  ; 
going  down  now  and  then  to  New  York,  where 
George  William  Curtis  says  he  used  to  see  him,  a 
"  quaint  figure  in  the  little  Talma  cloak,"  with  a 
"  springing  step  and  cheery  twinkle  of  the  eye  as 
he  passed  along  Broadway."  (You  will  find  about 
him  in  one  of  the  "  Easy  Chair "  papers,  and  see 


26        PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

how  he  looked  in  his  old  age  with  his  "  chirping, 
cheery,  old  school  air.") 

He  died  on  the  28th  of  November,  1859,  and  was 
buried  near  his  favorite  Sleepy  Hollow. 

NOTE.  —  A  nearly  complete  list  of  his  works  is  as  follows  : 
Salmagundi,  History  of  New  York,  Sketch-Book,  Bracebridge 
Hall,  Tales  of  a  Traveller,  Life  of  Columbus,  Conquest  of  Gra 
nada,  Tales  of  the  Alhambra,  Moorish  Chronicles,  Legends  of 
the  Conquest  of  Spain,  Spanish  Voyages,  Tour  on  the  Prairies, 
Astoria,  Adventures  of  Captain  Bonneville,  Life  of  Margaret 
Davidson,  Life  of  Goldsmith,  Life  of  Campbell,  Life  of 
Mahomet,  Wolferfs  Roost,  Crayon  Papers,  Abbotsford  and  New- 
stead  Abbey,  Life  of  Washington.  (It  is  not  practicable  to 
give  each  title  with  exactness,  as  they  vary  in  different  edi 
tions,  and  collections  have  been  published  with  varying 
titles.)  Pierre  M.  Irving,  a  nephew,  edited  his  Life  and 
Letters,  and  Charles  Dudley  Warner  has  lately  edited  a 
Life  of  Washington  Irving,  for  the  "American  Men  of  Letters  " 
Series.  A  sketch  of  "  Sunnyside  and  its  Proprietor  "  may  be 
found  in  Tuckerman's  Homes  of  American  Authors  ;  and, 
finally,  the  "  Irving  Centenary  Number  "  of  The  Critic  gives 
several  personal  reminiscences  and  criticisms  and  a  bibliog 
raphy.  Recently  there  has  been  published  a  luxurious  book, 
by  A.  E.  P.  Searing,  with  more  than  fifty  engravings  of 
scenery,  entitled  The  Land  of  Rip  Van  Winkle. 


<i/. 


f7 


II. 

JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER. 

THE  second  writer  to  show  to  the  world  that 
we  in  America  were  to  have  a  literature  of 
our  own,  was  the  man  whose  name  stands  above. 
Irving  was  just  beginning  to  be  famous  when 
Cooper  began.  It  is  a  fact  worth  remembering, 
too,  that  it  was  about  the  period  when  Walter  Scott 
was  at  the  height  of  his  popularity,  and  that  this 
new  American  novelist  who  was  destined  to 
similar  popularity  among  his  own  countrymen, 
launched  his  first  book  in  the  same  year  (1820) 
that  Ivanhoe  appeared. 

It  was  from  no  purpose,  from  no  following  a 
natural  bent,  but  the  result  of  an  impulse,  an  un 
expected  coming  true  of  what  was  spoken  in  sport 
ive  boast,  that  made  Cooper  an  author.  Nothing 

in  his  past  had  turned  him  in  that  direction  ;  he 
29 


30       PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

was  thirty  years  old,  and  having  no  special  profes 
sion,  had  apparently  settled  down  as  a  sort  of  gen 
tleman  farmer,  engaged  in  looking  after  his  estate, 
planting  trees  and  living  the  country  life  he  was 
always  so  fond  of.  That  this  should  have  been 
broken  in  upon  the  way  it  was,  and  that  he  should 
have  written  more  than  thirty  novels  besides  other 
books  during  the  next  thirty  years,  were  circum 
stances  that  must  have  seemed  to  him  as  extraor 
dinary  as  they  do  to  us. 

He  happened  one  day  to  be  reading  to  his  wife 
an  English  society  novel,  and  not  being  pleased 
with  it,  he  laid  it  down,  saying,  "  I  believe  I 
could  write  a  better  story  myself,"  and  set  to 
work  and  wrote  Precaution  ;  whether  as  good  or  not, 
tradition  does  not  tell,  but  probably  quite  equal  to 
any  of  its  class  —  which  is  not  saying  that  it  is  in  the 
least  attractive.  He  had  a  poor  opinion  of  it,  and 
perhaps  there  his  authorship  might  have  ended  but 
for  some  of  his  friends,  who  said  as  he  had  done 
fairly  well  with  a  subject  he  knew  nothing  about — 
English  society  —  he  must  try  his  hand  at  some 
thing  he  was  acquainted  with. 


JAMES    KENT  MORE   COOPER.  31 

The  result  was  The  Spy,  in  which  he  created  one 
of  his  best-known  characters  from  humble  life, 
Harvey  Birch.  The  scene  where  the  story  was 
laid  was  the  battle-ground  of  a  great  deal  of  par 
tisan  warfare  during  the  Revolution,  and  some  of 
the  incidents  he  worked  up  he  had  heard  from  the 
lips  of  survivors.  The  pictures  of  country  life  and 
hospitality  at  the  Westchester  home  were  no  doubt 
true  to  the  life ;  and  who  can  doubt,  while  he  laughs 
over  it,  that  the  good  cheer  at  the  grand  dinner 
party  at  the  Locusts  had  some  foundation  in  fact  ? 
—  when  "the  formal  procession  from  the  kitchen 
to  the  parlor  commenced,"  and  Caesar  led  the  van, 
supporting  a  turkey  on  the  palms  of  his  hands,  the 
servant  of  Captain  Lawton  following  with  a  Vir 
ginia  ham,  next  the  valet  of  Colonel  Wellmere 
with  fricasseed  chickens  and  oyster  patties,  after 
him  the  attendant  of  Doctor  Sitgreaves  with  an 
enormous  tureen  of  soup,  next  another  trooper  with 
a  pair  of  roasted  ducks,  followed  by  a  white  ser 
vant  boy  groaning  under  a  load  of  vegetables  ;  all 
these  things  having  been  deposited  on  the  table, 
Caesar  led  the  march  back  to  the  kitchen,  soon  re- 


32        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

turning  again,  at  the  head  of  the  procession,  con 
veying  "  whole  flocks  of  pigeons,  certain  bevies  of 
quails,  shoals  of  flat-fish,  bass,  and  sundry  wood 
cock;  and  the  third  attack  brought  potatoes, 
onions,  beets,  cold-slaw,  rice,  and  all  the  other 
minutise  of  a  goodly  dinner." 

The  next  subject  chosen  was  the  frontier  life 
which  he  had  been  familiar  with  in  his  childhood 
in  the  valley  of  the  Otsego,  and  he  wrote  The 
Pioneers.  It  has  been  complained  of  it  that  the 
descriptions  clog  the  story,  but  therein,  and  in  the 
introduction  of  Natty  Bumppo,  lies  the  charm  of 
the  book.  Every  chapter  shows  that  it  was  written 
with  love  and  how  happy  he  was  in  bringing  out  of 
the  past  all  those  events  and  scenes  of  a  back 
woodsman's  life.  The  aspects  of  winter  scenery, 
the  wood-chopping,  the  maple-sugar  making,  the 
fishing  and  woodcraft,  the  hunting,  and  the  spear 
ing  of  bass  by  torchlight,  are  some  of  its  best 
points ;  and  the  free-hand  touch  in  that  wilderness 
story  was  never  surpassed  in  the  later  and  more 
artistic  novels  of  the  "  Leather  Stocking  Series," 
of  which  this  was  pioneer  in  fact  as  well  as  title. 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.          33 

Just  here  you  may  need  to  be  reminded  that 
Cooper  was  one  of  the  first  to  describe  natural  scen 
ery,  and  mark  the  changes  of  the  sylvan  year  ;  not 
with  the  fine  analysis  and  discrimination  of  such 
later  writers  as  Thoreau  and  John  Burroughs,  but 
with  broad  sweeps,  which  served  well  their  purpose 
since  we  were  made  to  feel  that  we  were  there,  in 
the  forest,  that  the  freshness  of  the  primitive  wil 
derness  was  ours,  the  aroma  of  the  pines  and  hem 
locks  in  every  breath  of  the  air,  that  any  moment 
a  deer  might  bound  across  our  path,  that  civiliza 
tion  was  away  behind  —  we  had  left  it  and  come 
joyfully  into  this  new,  green,  rustling,  balsam- 
scented  world  where  Leather  Stocking  roamed  with 
all  the  freedom  of  Robin  Hood  in  Sherwood  For 
est,  without  Robin's  outlaw  doings. 

No  sooner  had  Cooper  begun  on  this  line  of  fic 
tion,  than  a  circumstance  occurred  which  directed 
him  into  another,  and  he  wrote  a  sea  story.  At  a 
dinner  party  where  he  was  present,  the  conver 
sation  turned  on  The  Pirate  of  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
just  published,  in  which  the  eye  of  one  skilled  in 
nautical  affairs  could  discern  some  errors  that  none 


34        PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

but  a  landsman  would  have  fallen  into.  Our 
author,  who  in  his  youth  had  spent  a  year  before 
the  mast  in  a  merchant  vessel,  and  been  midship 
man  three  years,  attempted  to  convince  the  com 
pany  that  if  Scott  had  been  a  seaman  he  could 
have  made  a  more  effectual  use  of  his  materials ; 
and  so  thinking,  "  I  must  write  one  more  book  — 
a  sea  tale  —  to  see  what  can  be  done  in  that  way 
by  a  sailor,"  he  said  to  his  wife. 

Thus  The  Pilot  had  its  origin,  with  John  Paul 
Jones  for  the  leading  personage,  though  the  true 
hero  was  another  of  his  strong  characters  out  of 
humble  life.  Long  Tom  Coffin  of  Nantucket,  who 
was  born  on  the  ocean  and  chose  to  die  there,  wha 
could  not  find  his  way  when  he  was  put  on  shore, 
who  believed  it  was  a  "  rank  lie  "  those  men  had 
told  him,  that  there  "  was  as  much  arth  as  water 
in  the  world  ; "  for,  said  he  : 

I've  sailed  with  a  blowing  sheet  months  an-end  without 
falling  in  with  as  much  land  or  rock  as  would  answer  a  gull 

to  lay  its  eggs  on Give  me  a  plenty  of  sea-room 

and  good  canvas,  where  there  is  no  occasion  for  pilots  at 
all,  sir.  For  my  part,  I  was  born  on  board  a  chibacco-nian, 


35 

and  never  could  see  the  use  of  more  land  than  here  and 
there  a  small  island  to  raise  a  few  vegetables  and  to  dry  your 
fish  on. 

Cooper  meant  to  have  "resuscitated"  him  in 
later  stories,  as  he  did  Natty  Bumppo ;  but  it  is 
perhaps  quite  as  well  that  our  last  look  of  the  sim 
ple-hearted  old  cockswain  was  on  the  morning 
after  that  night  of  terror,  when  he  went  down,  alone, 
with  the  vessel  he  loved  so  well,  sinking  with  the 
wreck  of  the  Ariel  in  the  overwhelming  sea.  In 
the  later  sea-stories,  of  more  or  less  excellence, 
more  skilfully  constructed,  he  never  surpassed  in 
thrilling  power  two  or  three  scenes  in  this. 

In  the  succession  of  novels,  he  varied  from  land 
to  ocean,  the  sea-stories  coming  along  at  intervals, 
being  written  at  different  places.  The  Red  Rover 
came  into  life  at  a  little  hamlet  near  Paris  (  during 
a  long  residence  of  himself  and  family  in  Europe  ), 
whence  his  imagination  transported  him  to  the 
scene  of  the  opening  chapters,  Newport,  Rhode 
Island,  where  we  make  the  acquaintance  of  the 
vessels  and  men  who  are  to  be  concerned  in  those 
exciting  events,  pursuit,  sea-fight,  wreck,  height- 


36       PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

ened  by  the  terrors  of  a  tornado  —  so  rapid,  so 
vivid,  so  well  managed  that  we  half  incline  to  place 
it  second  in  merit.  The  Water  Witch,  written  two 
years  later,  has  a  jaunty,  foreign  air,  and  can  more 
properly  be  called  a  romance.  The  Wing  and 
Wing  was  a  favorite  with  him,  though  just  why  one 
can  hardly  see ;  the  vessel  is  a  French  privateer  in 
the  Mediterranean,  and  the  sailors  and  other  char 
acters  are  of  several  nationalities,  chief  among 
them  Ithuel  Bolt,  one  of  the  New  Englanders 
whom  Cooper  had  little  love  for,  usually  making 
them  hypocrites,  or  coarse  and  vulgar.  In  the  same 
year  with  the  last,  was  written  The  Two  Admirals, 
one  of  the  most  spirited,  narrating  the  evolutions 
of  fleets  instead  of  single  ships. 

He  composed  and  wrote  rapidly,  and  no  sooner 
was  one  off  his  hands  than  he  planned  another, 
sometimes  carrying  along  two  together,  as  in  the 
case  of  Jack  Tier  and  The  Crater,  neither  of  which 
ranks  with  his  best,  while  both  have  a  good  deal 
of  power  in  certain  chapters  and  keep  their  inter 
est  nearly  to  the  end.  The  time  of  the  first  is  the 
Mexican  War,  and  the  action  takes  place  near  the 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.          37 

Dry  Tortugas  and  neighboring  reefs ;  thus  Cooper 
takes  advantage  of  many  localities,  and  uses  mu 
tiny,  abandonment,  all  thrilling  episodes  on  board 
ship  and  war  of  elements,  and  puts  a  seaman's 
knowledge  and  resources  to  severest  test.  There 
is  not  one  of  the  sea-stories  without  brilliant  and 
commanding  passages.  In  Jack  Tier  is  drawn  with 
a  bold  hand  one  type  of  captain,  that  cruel,  coarse 
"  old  sea-dog,  Stephen  Spike,  skipper  of  the  Molly 
Swash"  and  the  escape  from  the  sharks,  the  oc 
currences  at  the  lighthouse  and  the  firing  at  the 
supposed  ghost  of  the  man  Spike  had  abandoned 
to  his  fate  are  in  the  author's  best  manner.  As 
for  The  Crater  it  is  like  Jules  Verne  in  preposterous 
improbability,  but  the  details  of  life  there  and  at 
Rancocus  Island  are  Robinson  Crusoe-ish  in  their 
fascination. 

Another  which  tells  how  The  Sea  Lions,  two  ships 
of  the  same  name,  go  down  to  the  southern  seas 
in  search  of  seals,  has  some  strong  chapters  where 
the  men  are  ice-bound  and  experience  the  awful 
rigors  of  an  antarctic  winter ;  and  probably  no 
such  picture  of  the  appalling  desolation  of  Cape 


38        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

Horn  and  the  loneliness  of  the  infinite  ocean  can 
be  found  in  any  other  writing : 

Directly  ahead  of  the  schooner  rose  a  sort  of  pyramid  of 
broken  rocks,  which  occupying  a  small  island  stood  isolated 
in  a  measure,  and  some  distance  in  advance  of  other  and 
equally  ragged  ranges  of  mountains,  which  belonged  also  to 
islands  detached  from  the  mainland  thousands  of  years  be 
fore,  under  some  violent  convulsion  of  nature 

"  You  know  the  spot,  do  you,  Stephen  ?  "  demanded  Bos- 
well  Gardner,  with  interest. 

"  Yes,  sir,  there's  no  mistake.  That's  the  Horn.  Eleven 
times  have  I  doubled  it,  and  this  is  the  third  time  that  I've 
been  so  close  in  as  to  get  a  fair  sight  of  it.  Once  I  went  in 
side  as  I've  told  you,  sir." 

"  I  have  doubled  it  six  times  myself,"  said  Gardner,  "  but 
never  saw  it  before.  Most  navigators  give  it  a  wide  berth. 
'Tis  said  to  be  the  stormiest  place  on  the  known  earth." 

The  men  had  climbed  it,  and  saw  the  limitless  of  world 
water :  — 

The  earth  probably  does  not  contain  a  more  remarkable 
sentinel  than  this  pyramid  on  which  our  hero  had  now  taken 
his  station.  There  it  stood,  actually  the  Ultima  Thule  of  this 
vast  continent.  .  .  .  The  eye  saw  to  the  right,  the  Pa 
cific  ;  in  front  was  the  Southern  or  Antarctic  ocean,  and  to 
the  left  was  the  great  Atlantic. 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.          39 

True  or  imaginary,  Cooper  never  drew  a  more 
vivid  picture  than  in  that  thirteenth  chapter,  of 
which  a  few  extracts  give  only  a  faint  idea. 

Afloat  and 'Ashore again  takes  him  on  the  sea ;  this, 
his  first  book  in  autobiographic  form,  leaves  the 
hero  drowning,  but  the  sequel,  Miles  Wallingford, 
picks  him  up.  Satanstoe,  also  an  autobiography, 
has  a  sequel,  The  Chainbearer.  The  four  have 
much  to  do  with  colonial  life  in  New  York  ;  doubt 
less  "  Clawbonny,"  the  home  of  Miles,  is  a  fair 
representation,  with  its  one-story,  gabled  stone 
house,  "  to  which  had  been  added  until  the  whole 
structure  got  to  resemble  a  cluster  of  cottages 
thrown  together  without  the  least  attention  to 
order  or  regularity,"  orchards,  meadows,  ploughed 
fields  all  around,  barns,  granaries  of  solid  stone, 
a  comfortable,  cosey  country  place.  Lucy  Hard 
ing  in  the  two  stories,  and  Anneke  Mordaunt  in 
Satanstoe,  are  Cooper's  most  clearly  defined  hero 
ines.  Usually  they  are  so  vague  and  tame  there 
is  nothing  to  remember  them  by  ;  there  is  hardly 
so  much  stamina  in  them  all  as  would  furnish  one 
Jane  Eyre,  Or  Jeanie  Deans,  or  Dinah  Morris. 


40        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

You  cannot  even  tell  in  what  story  Alice  was,  or 
what  Cora  did,  or  keep  Ellen  separate  in  your 
mind  from  Elizabeth  or  Mabel.  They  are  lovely, 
or  they  would  not  be  heroines,  and  for  the  same 
reason  they  are  loved  ;  they  journey  into  the  wil 
derness  and  have  adventures,  but  the  pattern  is 
much  the  same  wherever  found. 

Satanstoe  is  a  neck  of  land,  a  farm,  the  home  of 
the  Littlepage  family,  from  which  the  young  heir 
goes  forth,  seeing  the  word  up  towards  the  frontier, 
Albany  way,  at  a  period  of  which  Mrs.  Grant  wrote 
in  her  American  Lady,  which  Cooper  often  refers  to 
and  would  have  advised  one  to  take  in  collateral 
reading,  as  he  would  Parkman's  Montcalm  and 
Wolfe,  if  it  had  then  been  written.  In  this  spirited 
and  fine  novel,  the  heir,  Corny,  sees  Dutch  life,  has 
experiences  in  Albany,  goes  coasting  in  the  streets 
and  engages  in  the  mad  pranks  of  the  young  men, 
makes  the  acquaintance  of  that  vigorously  drawn 
roysterer,  Guert  Ten  Eyck,  and  is  one  of  the  party 
who  have  the  sleighride  on  the  Hudson  on  the  eve 
when  the  ice  is  breaking  up  —  one  of  the  most 
curdling  passages  in  modern  fiction.  The  Chain- 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.         41 

bearer  continues  the  narrative,  with  less  spirit,  how 
ever,  till  you  come  to  the  episode  of  the  squatters, 
Thousandacres,  his  gaunt  wife,  his  half-savage 
sons  and  the  girl,  Lowina,  which  is  drawn  with  a 
masterly  hand. 

It  is  not  practicable  in  one  short  paper  to  run 


OTSEGO   HALL. —  FROM    DRAWING    BY    MISS    COOPER. 

over  the  whole  of  Cooper's  novels.  He  was  a  very 
uneven  writer ;  a  few  of  the  books  are  poor  and 
tiresome,  others,  like  The  Wept  of  Wish-ton-  Wish  and 
Wyandotte,  are  of  medium  quality,  while  certain  of 
the  sea-stories  and  the  Leather-Stocking  Tales  are 
of  superlative  excellence.  These  need  no  exposi- 


42        PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

tion,  no  commendation.  He  was  master  of  that 
kind  of  fiction  which  owes  its  interest  to  incident 
and  adventures ;  swift  in  movement,  picturesque 
in  treatment.  How  fresh  and  exhilarating  after 
the  staple  novels  of  mediaeval  life,  castles,  knight- 
errantry,  kings  and  courts,  society  in  foreign  capi 
tals,  artificiality,  must  have  been  TJie  Pioneers  and 
those  that  followed  in  the  series !  He  had  created 
a  new  kind  of  romance.  These  stories  of  life  on  the 
frontier,  of  the  backwoodsmen,  Indians,  the  wilder 
ness,  were  a  novelty.  We  have  to  thank  him  for 
and  give  him  the  honor  of  the  true  American  novel 
in  literature ;  and  at  this  late  day  no  one  need  feel 
called  upon  to  find  fault  with  him  for  not  being 
artistic,  or  for  not  developing  character.  Later 
writers  may  and  do  excel  in  those  respects,  but  we 
have  only  one  Cooper,  and  his  best  books  hold  the 
ground,  always  popular  with  a  large  class. 

The  question  has  been  asked  if  he  really  knew 
the  man,  "Natty  Bumppo."  It  does  not  matter. 
Was  he  real  ?  Every  schoolboy  believes  in  him,  al 
most  from  the  moment  when  he  appears,  standing 
six  feet  in  his  stockings,  tall,  wiry,  sandy-haired, 


JAMES   FENIMORE  COOPER.  43 

with  gray  eyes  under  shaggy  brows,  in  fox-skin 
cap,  in  coat  and  leggings  and  moccasons  of  deer 
skin,  with  leathern  pouch,  powder  horn,  rifle,  and 
the  old  hound,  Hector.  He  refuses  to  be  made  a 
myth  of.  Leather  Stocking  has  a  foothold  on  the 
soil,  and  he  will  keep  it. 

The  author  had  an  intimate  fondness  for  him. 
Clearly  to  Cooper  he  was  real.  See  how  careful  a 
study  he  makes  of  his  character  in  the  ninth  chap 
ter  of  The  Pathfinder;  if  it  had  been  George  Wash 
ington,  he  would  not  have  done  it  more  faithfully ; 
and  in  Home  as  Found  Eve  Effingham  says : 

There,  near  the  small  house  that  is  erected  over  a  spring 
of  delicious  water,  stood  the  hut  of  Natty  Bumppo,  once 
known  throughout  all  these  mountains  as  a  renowned  hunter ; 
a  man  who  had  the  simplicity  of  a  woodsman,  the  heroism 
of  a  savage,  the  faith  of  a  Christian,  and  the  feelings  of  a 
poet.  A  better  than  he,  after  his  fashion,  seldom  lived. 

In  the  preface  to  The  Pathfinder  is  an  explana 
tion  of  the  order  in  which  the  five  stories  of  The 
Leather  Stocking  series  naturally  come.  The 
latest  of  Cooper's  critics,  Prof.  Lounsbury,  says : 


44        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

"  The  life  of  Leather  Stocking  was  now  a  com 
plete  drama  in  five  acts  ;  beginning  with  the  first 
war-path  in  The  Deerslayer,  followed  by  his  career 
of  activity  and  love  in  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans 
and  The  Pathfinder,  and  his  old  age  and  death  in 
TJie  Pioneers  and  The  Prairie" 

Of  Cooper's  Indians,  he  says : 

"  But  whether  his  representation  be  true  or  false, 
it  has  from  that  time  to  this  profoundly  affected  pub 
lic  opinion.  Throughout  the  whole  civilized  world 
the  conception  of  the  Indian  character  as  Cooper 
drew  it  in  TheLastof  the  Mohicans,  and  further  elab 
orated  it  in  the  later  Leather-Stocking  Tales,  has 
taken  permanent  hold  of  the  imaginations  of  men." 

For  yourselves,  you  must  bring  your  own  judg 
ment  to  bear  on  the  question  after  you  have  read 
The  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,  and  Montcalm  and  Wolfe 
by  Parkman  —  history  set  against  romance. 

From  the  "  Introductions,"  by  the  author's 
daughter,  Susan  Fenimore  Cooper,  in  a  late  edition 
of  the  novels,  many  facts  about  his  life  may  be 
gathered,  and  at  the  end  are  notes  about  the  an 
cestral  home  on  Otsego  Lake.  Especially  valua- 


JAMES  FENIMORE  COOPER.          45 

ble  are  the  description  and  notes  in  The  Pioneers. 
In  scenes  of  The  Deerslayer  he  closely  describes 
the  Otsego  prior  to  the  time  when  the  first  rude 
settlement  was  begun  on  its  banks.  The  rock  of 
the  rendezvous  is  still  known  as  Otsego  Rock.  In 
the  ninth  and  eleventh  chapters  of  Home  as  found, 
the  mountain  called  "  The  Vision  "  and  the  village 
of  Templeton  (  before  described  in  The  Pioneers') 
show  us  the  Cooper  home.  It  is  interesting  to 
trace  Cooper  and  his  pursuits  in  this  way. 

He  was  born  in  Burlington,  N.  J.,  September  15, 
1790,  and  two  months  later  the  family  moved  up 
into  the  new  country  near  the  head-waters  of  the 
Susquehanna  on  Otsego  Lake,  where  he  spent  his 
childhood  and  his  later  years.  It  was  the  place 
dearest  on  earth  to  him  ;  he  loved  every  inch  of 
its  soil,  and  the  Lake  (the  Glimmerglass  of  his 
novels ),  was  a  perpetual  delight  to  him.  He  en 
joyed  a  farm  he  had  up  among  the  hills,  called  the 
"  Chalet,"  and  was  fond  of  all  domestic  animals ; 
had  a  favorite  cat  which  sat  on  his  shoulder  while 
he  wrote,  and  when  he  visited  the  barn  quarters 
a  whole  procession  of  poultry,  cows,  oxen,  horses, 


46        PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

dogs,  cats,  would  gather  about  him  and  follow  him. 
He  died  in  Cooperstown,  September  14,  1851. 
The  town,  whose  name  is  a  memorial  of  him,  keeps 
a  reminder  of  his  novels  in  the  names  given  to 
picturesque  spots  he  had  already  made  the  world 
familiar  with ;  the  little  steamer  that  plies  on  the 
lake  is  called  the  Natty  Bumppo,  and  a  marble 
statue  of  Natty,  rifle  in  hand  and  hound  looking 
up  into  his  face,  has  been  placed  on  a  point  over 
looking  the  cemetery  where  Cooper  is  buried. 

NOTE. —  A  list  of  Cooper's  novels  is  as  follows  :  The  Spy, 
The  Pioneers,  The  Pilot,  The  Last  of  the  Mohicans,  The  Red 
Raver,  The  Prairie,  The  Water  Witch,  The  Pathfinder,  The 
Deerslayer,  The  Two  Admirals,  The  Wing-and-  Wing,  Afloat 
and  Ashore,  Miles  Wallingford,  Satanstoe,  The  Chainbearer, 
The  Sea- Lions,  The  Bravo,  Jack  Tier,  The  Crater,  The  Wept 
of  Wish-ton- Wish,  Wyandotte,  Homeward  Bound,  Home  as 
Found,  Lionel  Lincoln,  The  Headsman,  Mercedes  of  Castile, 
The  Heidenmatier,  The  Red-Skins,  The  Manikins,  Precaution, 
The  Oak  Openings,  The  Ways  of  the  Hour.  The  six  last 
named  are  poor,  and  the  four  next  preceding  are  of  compari- 
tively  small  value.  It  is  better  to  read  the  best  ones  twice 
than  spend  time  on  the  others.  He  wrote  several  volumes 
of  travels,  other  miscellaneous  works,  and  a  history  of  the 
navy  of  the  United  States,  and  biographies  of  distinguished 
American  naval  officers.  As  it  was  his  request  that  no 
"  authorized  account  of  his  life  "  be  written,  there  is  no  biog 
raphy  of  importance  except  that  in  the  American  "  Men  of 
Letters  "  Series,  by  Professor  Lounsbury,  which  gives  a  fine 
critical  estimate  of  his  writings. 


WILLIAM    H.    PRESCOTT. 


III. 


WILLIAM    HICKLING   PRESCOTT. 

IF  you  wish  to  see  how  highly  favored  you  are  in 
your  historians,  in  your  Macaulay  and  Green, 
your  Bancroft  and  Prescott  and  Palfrey  and  Motley 
and  Parkman,  with  all  their  richness  of  language, 
their  pleasant  way  of  using  incidents  and  power  of 
making  history  attractive,  you  need  to  be  put  on  a 
probation  of  Hume  —  a  penitential  one  you  would 
find  it  —  till  you  came  to  fully  appreciate  your  priv 
ileges  and  see  what  you  have  to  be  thankful  for. 

Hume  was  the  bane  of  my  childhood.  It  was 
early  impressed  upon  me,  enjoined  upon  me,  that 
I  must  read  Hume's  History  of  England.  I  must 
forego  the  Ossian,  the  Shenstone,  the  Campbell, 
the  Burns,  the  Spectator,  the  Rambler,  and  (  saddest 
of  all )  The  Scottish  Chiefs,  which  stood,  all  gay  in 
scarlet  morocco  and  gilding,  or  rich  in  russet,  a 
49 


50        PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

tempting  row  of  twenty-six  volumes  on  the  upper 
shelf.  Next  below,  sizing  up,  were  books  of  the 
stature  of  CJiesterfield 's  Letters,  Tytler,  the  Idler, 
Junius'  Letters  and  Bennett's  Letters;  and  then 
that  almost  hateful  row  of  nine  —  I  doubt  not  they 
are  in  all  old-fashioned  libraries  in  just  the  same 
style  of  binding  —  in  leathern  covers,  with  a  red 
morocco  strip  near  the  top,  like  a  bandage,  for  the 
gilt-lettered  title,  and  a  green  one  near  the  bottom 
for  volume  and  author,  part  labeled  "  Hume,"  then 
three  "  Smollett,"  and  then  "  Bissett  "  —  a  trying 
mystery  to  me  was  that — if  the  history  was  by 
Hume  ;  but  I  found  out  later. 

Dry  old  Hume  !  If  I  had  not  known  him  so  long 
I  should  love  him  more.  I  had  to  begin  on  him  at 
ten;  and  can  I  ever  forget  the  dreariness  of  the 
"  tonnage  and  poundage,"  and  the  wonder  what  it 
could  mean,  and  why  there  was  so  much  of  it? 
Revenues  to  the  crown,  confiscations,  prorogations 
of  Parliament  had  some  meaning  that  a  child  could 
vaguely  grasp  at,  but  that "  tonnage  and  poundage  " 
fairly  conquered  my  faculties,  swallowed  up  what 
little  intelligence  I  had.  It  was  my  refreshment, 


WILLIAM    HICKLING   PRESCOTT.  51 

my  spot  of  green  in  the  desert,  to  read  the  page 
where  the  death  of  the  king  came  in,  and  the  names 
of  his  children  were  given  (  even  they  were  often 
"  issue,"  instead  of  sons  and  daughters ),  Con 
stance,  Agatha,  Adela,  Maud  —  how  delicious !  I 
luxuriated  in,  dreamed  over,  dwelt  upon  any  kind 
of  a  passage  dug  out  of  the  dreariness  which  seemed 
to  bring  anything  personal,  human,  life-like  before 
me.  That  a  king  should  have  a  surname,  that  John 
should  be  called  "  Jackland,"  and  Henry  "  Beau- 
clerc "  was  a  keen  delight,  and  the  first  Richard 
was  the  world's  hero  for  all  time  for  the  sake  of 
that  magic  "  Lion-hearted."  And  dare  I  say  that 
in  the  general  aridity,  the  strangling  of  the  little 
princes,  the  drowning  of  Clarence  in  the  butt  of 
Malmsey,  and  the  episodes  connected  with  Henry's 
six  wives  were  events  to  be  turned  to  with  eager 
interest  instead  of  the  proper  horror ! 

It  was  after  too  much  Hume  that  Prescott  came 
to  my  relief.  History  could  be  made  interesting 
it  seemed ;  its  personages  were  not  like  the  dry 
bones  of  the  valley ;  it  was  practicable  to  marshal 
them  before  one  as  men  and  women  who  had  actu- 


52         PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

ally  lived.  The  work  that  told  me  this  was  his 
first :  the  History  of  the  Reign  of  Ferdinand  and 
Isabella  —  a  period  of  three  important  events,  the 
discovery  of  America,  the  conquest  of  the  Moors 
in  Spain,  the  establishment  of  the  Inquisition  ;  and 
during  their  reign  three  celebrated  personages  in 
Spanish  history  were  actors,  Columbus,  Cardinal 
Ximenes  ( the  great  statesman  ),  and  Gonsalvo  de 
Cordova,  "  the  great  Captain." 

But  instead  of  dwelling  upon  the  great  historical 
works  of  this  author,  with  which  you  surely  ought 
to  have  already  become  acquainted,  let  us  take  a 
long  look  back  and  see  why  he  wrote  history,  and 
how  he  did  it.  After  that,  if  you  have  failed  to 
read  him,  you  will  do  so  with  keener  interest  from 
knowing  the  difficulties  he  had  to  conquer.  And 
if  haply  you  are  familiar  with  those  books,  you  will 
enjoy  them  the  more. 

William  Hickling  Prescott  was  born  in  Salem, 
Mass.,  May  4,  1796.  You  can  see  how  naturally 
his  imagination  must  have  helped  in  his  work,  vivi 
fying  and  brightening  it,  when  you  are  told  that  as 
a  boy  he  was  exceedingly  susceptible  to  all  stories 


WILLIAM    HICKLING   PRESCOTT.  53 

t>f  adventure  and  romance,  and  that  books  of  that 
class  were  his  favorites  ;  he  had  games  where  sol 
diers  were  the  actors,  and  with  one  of  his  school 
mates  used  to  have  fanciful  personal  combats  as  in 
the  days  of  chivalry,  the  two  having  appropriated 
for  their  use  portions  of  old  armor  from  among  the 
curiosities  in  the  Boston  Athenaeum,  and  they  took 
turns  in  telling  each  other  interminable  stories  of 
their  own  invention,  those  of  Prescott  being  the 
wildest  and  most  incredible. 

At  fifteen  he  entered  Harvard  College,  dreading 
the  examination,  but  he  did  himself  great  credit, 
and  on  the  following  day  wrote  to  his  father  that 
the  President  sent  down  a  dish  of  pears  to  the 
candidates,  and  treated  them  like  gentlemen,  and 
that  he  felt  twenty  pounds  lighter  after  it  was  over. 
He  had  not  been  long  in  college  when  the  accident 
occurred  which  destroyed  the  sight  of  one  eye  for 
ever,  and  before  a  year  and  a  half  had  passed  the 
other  was  so  badly  affected  that  he  went  to  stay  a 
while  at  the  Azores  for  a  remedy  ;  but  growing 
worse,  was  shut  in  a  totally  dark  room  for  six  weeks, 
where  he  took  his  exercise  by  walking  across  the 


54        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

floor,  "  hundreds  of  miles  in  all,"  he  said,  and 
amused  himself  by  singing,  always  cheerful,  always 
patient,  as  he  continued  to  be  through  his  whole 
life. 

This  walking,  for  the  sake  of  both  his  physical 
and  mental  well-being,  one  hears  a  good  deal  about 
later;  in  his  increasing  blindness  it  became  an 
absolute  necessity,  a  part  of  his  carefully  regulated 
plan,  to  keep  himself  in  condition  for  his  work,  and 
at  one  time  he  was  in  the  habit  of  walking  six  miles 
a  day ;  at  his  beloved  country  home  in  Pepperell 
there  was  a  path  worn  in  the  sod  which  his  feet  had 
made,  and  one  most  pathetic  incident  is  told  of 
him  when  towards  the  close  of  his  life  he  had  a 
house  at  Lynn,  and  as  there  was  hardly  a  tree  on 
the  place,  he  used  to  walk  round  and  round  in  the 
shade  of  the  broad  branches  of  a  cherry-tree,  "  a 
certain  length  of  time  every  day,  and  there,"  says 
his  biographer,  "  he  soon  wore  a  path  in  the  green 
sward,  and  so  deep  did  it  at  last  become,  that  now 
—  four  years  since  any  foot  has  pressed  it  —  the 
marks  still  remain,  as  a  sad  memorial  of  his  in 
firmity." 


WILLIAM    HICKLING   PRESCOTT.  55 

After  a  visit  to  Europe  he  came  home  not  much 
improved  in  eyesight,  and  was  obliged  to  give  up 
his  early  plans  in  consequence,  but  he  deliberately 
chose  as  the  occupation  of  his  life,  literary  work ; 
and  what  do  you  think  his  memoranda  for  prepara 
tion  was  ?  Though  already  an  educated  man,  this 
was  the  preparatory  course  of  study  he  marked  out: 

"  i.  Principles  of  grammar,  correct  writing,  etc  ; 
2.  Compendious  history  of  North  America;  3.  Fine 
prose-writers  of  English  from  Roger  Ascham  to  the 
present  day,  principally  with  reference  to  their 
mode  of  writing  —  not  including  historians,  except 
as  far  as  requisite  for  an  acquaintance  with  style. 
4.  Latin  classics  one  hour  a  day." 

And  "he  studied  as  if  he  had  been  a  schoolboy," 
Blair's  Rhetoric,  Murray's  Grammar,  and  "the 
prefatory  matter  of  Johnson's  Dictionary  for  the 
grammatical  portion  of  his  task,"  and  then  "  took 
up  the  series  of  good  English  writers,  studying 
enough  of  each  to  get  an  idea  of  his  style  and  gen 
eral  characteristics,"  and  so  for  nearly  one  year 
occupied  himself  ;  which  I  call  your  attention  to  in 
order  to  show  you  how  he  began  with  the  elements, 


5  6       PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR  YOUNG   FOLKS. 

and  with  what  thoroughness  he  fitted  himself  for 
future  work.  A  study  of  Prescott's  painstaking, 
his  systematic  industry,  and  discipline  of  himself, 
is  well  worth  the  while  of  any  young  person,  and  is 
calculated  to  reprove  certain  flippant  and  super 
ficial  ideas  about  "  getting  an  education  "  which 
are  too  common.  In  his  own  person  he  exalted 
the  task-work  of  learning  and  made  it  heroic,  while 
his  simple  earnestness  and  teachableness,  like  those 
of  a  child,  throw  a  great  charm  around  this  phase 
of  his  life.  Prescott  the  man,  in  his  study,  strug 
gling  with  his  life-long  infirmity,  calling  himself  to 
account  for  the  least  ill-use  of  his  time  and  powers, 
always  serene,  master  of  himself  —  Prescott  as  the 
man  is  even  greater  than  the  historian. 

After  his  year  of  English,  he  spent  one  in  a  se 
rious  study  of  French  literature,  and  in  the  third 
he  began  Italian ;  next  he  became  interested  in 
Spanish,  and  says  in  a  letter  to  Bancroft  that  he 
is  "battling  with  it,"  but  doubts  if  "there  are 
many  valuable  things  that  the  Key  of  Knowledge 
will  unlock  in  that  language,"  never  dreaming 
of  the  career  which  that  very  language  was  to  open 


WILLIAM    HICKLING   PRESCOTT.  57 

to  him.  Having  eventually  decided  upon  histori 
cal  composition  he  deliberated  long  upon  the  sub 
ject,  and  made  this  note :  "  I  subscribe  to  the 
history  of  the  Reign  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella. 
January  igth,  1826 ;  "  and  beneath,  years  after,  he 
wrote:  "  A  fortunate  choice.  May,  1847." 

He  made  a  list  of  several  hundred  volumes  to 
be  read  or  consulted  ;  and  with  regard  to  his  par 
tial  blindness,  he  writes :  "  What  I  can't  read  may 
be  read  to  me.  I  will  secure  what  I  can  of  the 
foreign  tongues,  and  leave  the  English  to  my  sec 
retary.  When  I  can't  get  six,  get  four  hours  a  day. 
.  .  I  must  confine  myself  to  what  exclusively  and 
directly  concerns  it  [my  subject]  .  .  I  must  make 
memoranda  accurate  and  brief  of  every  book  I 
read  for  this  object." 

He  thought  that  "  travelling  at  this  lame  gait," 
he  might  yet  hope  in  five  or  six  years  to  reach  the 
goal ; "  but  it  took  twice  that  time.  Of  one  of  his 
secretaries,  he  writes  to  a  friend  : 

"  My  excellent  reader  and  present  scribe  reads 
to  me  Spanish  with  a  true  Castilian  accent  two 
hours  a  day  without  understanding  a  word  of  it 


58        PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

What  do  you  think  of  this  for  the  temperature  of 
the  dog-days  ?  And  which  would  you  rather  be,  the 
reader  or  the  readee  1 " 

What  a  prodigious  power  of  memory  and  mental 
assimilation  that  he  could  "digest  while  sitting 
alone  in  his  study  the  material  of  four  hours'  read 
ing  which  he  had  been  listening  to ; "  more  wonder 
ful  stiH.  that  he  could  think  over  a  mass  of  matter 
and  compose  in  his  memory,  carrying  along  what 
would  fill  fifty  or  sixty  pages  of  printed  text,  keep- 
i  4  it  for  several  days,  running  it  over  and  over, 
r  «e  going  over  in  his  mind  a  single  chapter  of 
One  of  his  histories  sixteen  times,  to  be  entirely 
satisfied  with  its  composition ! 

For  the  first  chapter  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella, 
he  was  three  months  reading  and  taking  notes. 
When  you  think  of  such  preparation,  supplemented 
by  such  mental  labor,  will  you  not  read  that  his 
tory  with  reverence  for  the  tireless  spirit,  the  pa 
tient  hand  of  the  author?  When  it  was  com 
pleted  he  calculated  that  he  had  spent  on  it  ten  of 
the  best  years  of  his  life,  but  it  had  been,  he  says, 
"  a  continual  source  of  pleasure,"  with  all  its  dis- 


WILLIAM    HICKLING    PRESCOTT.  59 

advantages,  and  this  little  record  reads :  "  There 
is  no  happiness  so  great  as  that  of  a  permanent 
and  lively  interest  in  some  intellectual  labor;" 
but  he  had  the  elements  for  enjoyment  in  himself, 
in  his  well-regulated  spirit,  his  learning,  his  sunny 
temperament,  his  affability  towards  others.  One 
of  his  friends  said,  "  He  could  be  happy  in  more 
ways,  and  more  happy  in  any  one  of  them,  than 
any  other  person  I  have  ever  known." 

As  a  specimen  of  his  style,  here  is  the  descrip 
tion  of  the  future  queen,  the  patroness  of  Colum 
bus,  as  she  was  at  nineteen,  the  time  of  her  marriage 
with  her  cousin  Ferdinand  —  that  event  which 
united  the  kingdoms  of  Aragon  and  Castile : 

Isabella  was  a  year  older  than  her  lover.  In  stature  she 
was  somewhat  above  the  middle  size.  Her  complexion  was 
fair ;  her  hair  of  a  bright  chestnut  color  inclining  to  red ; 
and  her  mild  blue  eye  beamed  with  intelligence  and  sensi 
bility.  She  was  exceedingly  beautiful :  "  the  handsomest 
lady,"  said  one  of  her  household,  "  whom  I  ever  beheld,  and 
the  most  gracious  in  her  manners."  The  portrait,  still  ex 
isting  of  her  in  the  royal  palace,  is  conspicuous  for  an  open 
symmetry  of  features,  indicative  of  the  natural  serenity  of 
temper,  and  that  beautiful  harmony  of  intellectual  and  moral 


60        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

qualities,  which  most  distinguished  her.  She  was  dignified 
in  her  demeanor,  and  modest  even  to  a  degree  of  reserve. 
She  spoke  the  Castilian  language  with  more  than  usual  ele 
gance  ;  and  early  imbibed  a  relish  for  letters,  in  which  she 
was  superior  to  Ferdinand,  whose  education  in  this  particu 
lar  seems  to  have  been  neglected. 

This  you  will  see  is  a  highly  elaborated,  a  carefully 
considered  style ;  but  in  his  next  work,  the  History 
of  The  Conquest  of  Mexico,  it  becomes,  as  the  critics 
of  that  day  were  not  slow  to  notice,  "  richer,  freer, 
more  animated  and  graceful."  This  second  work, 
which  he  began  after  a  little  rest,  naturally  came 
easier  and  was  more  speedily  brought  to  a  close, 
having  been  finished  in  about  four  years.  He  had 
by  this  time  become  accustomed  to  historical  com 
position,  had  more  confidence  in  himself,  and  was 
able  to  break  away  from  any  arbitrary  restrictions 
which  had  almost  unconsciously  influenced  him. 
He  says  of  this  period :  "  I  wrote  with  much  less 
fastidiousness  and  elaboration.  Yet  I  rarely  wrote 
without  revolving  the  chapter  half  a  dozen  times  in 
my  mind.  But  I  did  not  podder  over  particular 
phrases." 


WILLIAM    HICKLING   PRESCOTT.  6 1 

The  Conquest  of  Mexico  is  a  far  more  absorbing 
work ;  the  subject  was  a  grand  one,  the  situations 
were  often  highly  romantic,  as  often  tragic.  What 
conditions  for  poem  or  story  in  some  of  the  adven 
tures,  as  of  the  young  prince  who  saw  his  father 
beheaded  while  he  himself  was  concealed  in  the 
branches  of  a  tree  overhead!  His  vicissitudes 
and  perils  equal  in  interest  those  of  Alfred  of  Eng 
land,  or  Charles  II.,  or  the  "Young  Chevalier;" 
for  instance,  one  day  while  playing  ball  in  the 
court-yard  of  his  own  palace,  a  party  of  soldiers 
came  with  orders  to  kill  him  on  the  spot ;  the  boy 
invited  them  into  the  palace,  and  while  they  were 
feasting,  he  passed  into  the  next  saloon  through 
a  passage,  still  keeping  within  their  sight  until  his 
attendants  by  flinging  spices  and  aromatics  upon 
a  burning  censer  in  the  ante-room  raised  such  a 
cloud  of  incense  as  hid  him  from  their  view,  and 
when  it  had  passed  off  he  was  gone,  having  escaped 
by  a  secret  passage  which  led  to  some  subterranean 
apartment. 

"And  now,"  says  Prescott,  on  February  3,  1844, 
"now  I  propose  to  break  ground  on  'Peru.'  I 


62        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

shall  work  the  mine,  however,  at  my  leisure  ;  "  but 
in  1847,  it  was  reacty  for  the  public,  that  most 
fascinating  of  all  his  books  (to  young  readers  at 
least)  f  the  History  of  the  Conquest  of  Peru.  When 
I  presume  to  speak  thus  for  the  younger  among 
his  admirers,  it  is  from  my  own  experience.  Never 
had  anything  been  to  me  so  attractive.  How  sug 
gestive  of  some  grand  looking-off  place  in  the  world 
of  knowledge,"  as  well  as  the  natural  world,  was 
this  passage  about  the  mountain-chains  of  South 
America ! 

Arranged  sometimes  in  a  single  line,  though  more  fre 
quently  in  two  or  three  lines  running  parallel  or  obliquely  to 
each  other,  they  seem  to  the  voyager  on  the  ocean  but  one 
continuous  chain ;  while  the  huge  volcanoes,  which  to  the 
inhabitants  of  the  table-land,  look  like  solitary  and  independ 
ent  masses,  appear  to  him  only  like  so  many  peaks  of  the 
vast  and  magnificent  range.  So  immense  is  the  scale  on 
which  Nature  works  in  these  regions  that  it  is  only  when 
viewed  from  a  great  distance,  that  the  spectator  can,  in  any 
degree,  comprehend  the  relation  of  the  several  parts  to  the 
Stupendous  whole. 

It  seemed  as  if  the  author  himself  entered  with 
unusual  zest  upon  the  manners  and  customs,  the 


WILLIAM    HICKLING   PRESCOTT.  63 

handiwork  and  character  of  the  Peruvians;  and 
intensely  interesting  are  his  accounts  of  their  epicu 
rean  sense  of  luxury  in  ornament ;  the  bridges  of 
twisted  osiers  swaying  to  every  motion  where  they 
spanned  high  in  air,  from  cliff  to  cliff,  the  darkly 
rushing  streams;  the  perfect  government  of  the 
Incas;  the  systematic  arrangement  and  regula 
tion  of  everything  throughout  the  vast  empire; 
the  post  communication ;  the  sisterhood  of  "  The 
Virgins  of  the  Sun  "  —  it  was  all  new,  graphically 
told,  enchaining  the  attention  from  first  to  last.  But 
dark  and  red  with  carnage  was  the  history  after 
Francisco  Pizarro  set  his  foot  in  the  peaceful  land, 
horrible  and  sickening,  but  you  will  be  swept  along 
by  it  as  by  irresistible  destiny  till  you  see  the  last 
of  the  Incas  strangled  like  a  vile  criminal  and  the 
Pizarros  one  by  one  laid  in  their  bloody  graves ; 
and  when  all  is  done,  lo !  it  is  not  fiction  you  have 
been  spending  your  sympathy  and  your  tears  over, 
but  history,  as  a  master-hand  can  conjure  it  up 
and  fix  it  on  the  printed  page. 

The  last  undertaking  of  Prescott  was  the  His 
tory  of  Philip  the  Second.     The  Spanish  subjects 


64        PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

still  held  their  power  over  him ;  see  how  he  writes 
to  Lady  Lyell :  "  If  I  should  go  to  heaven  when  I 
quit  this  dirty  ball,  I  shall  find  many  acquaintances 
there,  and  some  of  them  very  respectable,  of  the 
olden  time.  .  .  .  Don't  you  think  I  should  have  a 
kindly  greeting  from  good  Isabella  ?  .  .  But  there 
is  one  that  I  am  sure  will  owe  me  a  grudge,  and 
that  is  the  very  man  I  have  been  making  two  big 
volumes  upon.  With  all  my  good-nature  I  can't 
wash  him  even  into  the  darkest  French  gray.  He 
is  black  and  all  black." 

That  work  he  never  completed :  on  the  twenty- 
eighth  of  January,  1859,  he  passed  from  this  life. 
He  had  expressed  a  wish  that  before  his  burial, 
his  dead  body  might  be  placed  in  the  library  where 
he  had  spent  so  many  studious  and  happy  hours, 
and  there  allowed  to  remain  for  a  time ;  and  it 
was  done. 

Dead  he  lay  among  his  books, 

in  the  silent  presence  of  the  great  host  whose 
thoughts  had  been  such  joy  and  strength  and 
inspiration  to  him;  "in  unmoved,  inaccessible 


WILLIAM    HICKLING   PRESCOTT.  65 

peace ;  and  the  lettered  dead  of  all  ages  and 
climes  and  countries  collected  there  seemed  to 
look  down  upon  him  in  their  earthly  and  passion 
less  immortality,  and  claim  that  his  name  should 
hereafter  be  imperishably  associated  with  theirs." 

NOTE. —  His  principal  works  are  History  of  the  Reign  of 
Ferdinand  and  Isabella,  Conquest  of  Mexico,  Conquest  of 
Peru,  History  of  Philip  the  Second.  His  biography  was  writ 
ten  by  George  Ticknor.  You  will  find  that  the  paths  of 
Irving,  Prescott  and  Motley  sometimes  crossed  one  another. 
Irving  at  one  time  contemplated  writing  the  History  of 
the  Conquest  of  Mexico,  but  graciously  gave  it  up  when  he 
learned  of  Prescott's  intention ;  and  under  similar  circum 
stances  Motley  courteously  gave  up  Philip  the  Second.  The 
particulars  of  the  former  case  are  to  be  found  in  the  life  of 
Irving  by  his  nephew ;  of  the  latter  in  Ticknor's  biography 
of  Prescott,  chap.  xx. 


RALPH  WALDO  EMERSON.  —  /'row/ 


Milmore. 


IV. 


RALPH   WALDO    EMERSON. 

T  AM  curious  to  know,"  you  say,  "  how  we 
*•  young  folks  must  go  to  work  to  become  in 
terested  in  the  writings  of  Emerson." 

But  why  "  go  to  work  "  at  all  ?  You  need  not 
trouble  yourself  about  his  mysticism,  or  his  theol 
ogy,  or  try  to  know  what  "Transcendentalism" 
is,  or  seek  to  find  out  the  deep  meaning  of  some  of 
his  essays  and  poems.  Let  those  matters  go  wholly, 
or  till  mature  years  and  judgment  qualify  you  for 
the  investigation.  Meanwhile,  let  Emerson  speak 
to  you  for  himself,  in  words  you  will  find  it  easy 
enough  to  understand. 

A  sweeter,  serener  soul  than  his  it  were  hard  to 
find ;  he  taught  cheerfulness,  courage,  steadfast-] 
ness ;  his  books  are  full  of  golden  keys  to  unlock 

difficulties ;    there   are   certain    essays   which   it 
69 


70        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

would  be  worth  your  while  to  have  always  at 
hand  so  abounding  are  they  in  helps,  such  inspir 
ation  is  in  them.  He  has  a  power  unsurpassed  of 
crystallizing  a  thought;  there  it  stands,  finished 
and  entire  in  one  of  his  short  sentences.  Just  a 
word  about  that  style  of  his,  which  a  certain  critic 
said  was  made  up  of  one  short  sentence  and  then 
another,  and  which  Emerson  himself  said  he  "  got 
by  striking  out,"  being  acquired  by  a  succession 
of  the  most  careful  winnowings  till  everything  but 
the  wheat,  and  good  sound  kernels  at  that,  had 
blown  away.  You  will  observe  as  you  become 
acquainted  with  his  writings  that  he  produced  no 
one  great  work,  no  masterpiece  standing  by  itself, 
but  in  general  papers  made  up  of  detached 
thoughts  which  do  not  lose  much  by  being  taken 
away  from  their  surroundings. 

Emerson's  favorite  form  of  writing  was,  as  you 
are  aware,  the  essay;  not  of  the  picturesque, 
sketchy,  half-narrative  kind  you  are  familiar  with 
in  Irving's  Sketch  Book  and  other  volumes  of 
his,  but  condensed,  epigrammatic,  crammed  with 
thought. 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON.  Jl 

His  first  series  (published  in  1841,  and  known 
as  Essays,  First  Series)  contains  twelve,  from 
which  select  for  your  reading,  those  on  "  History," 
"Friendship"  and"  Heroism."  What  an  eye- 
opener  you  will  find  that  first  one  !  What  enjoy 
ment  you  will  have  in  the  grand  thoughts  of  Em 
erson  —  thoughts  so  crystal-clear  that  it  would  be 
an  affront  to  your  understanding  to  presume  upon 
interpreting  them.  You  will  feel  your  horizon 
widen,  and  that  you,  too,  are  helping  to  make  his 
tory  ;  that  "  what  Plato  has  thought "  you  may 
think,  and  "  what  has  befallen  any  man  "  you  can 
understand. 

Read  the  one  on  "  Friendship  "  for  the  sake  of 
the  exalted  place  he  gives  to  that  relation,  and  to 
see  how  fine  and  pure,  how  noble  and  comforting 
it  may  become  when  his  two  chief  elements  go 
into  its  composition  —  truth  and  tenderness. 

For  his  nicety  in  defining  a  quality,  which  he 
possessed  in  affluent  measure,  read  "  Heroism," 
and  see  in  what  that  special  virtue  consists,  and 
what  it  has  stood  for  in  all  time. 

He  says : 


72        PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

There  is  somewhat  in  great  actions,  which  does  not  allow 
us  to  go  behind  them.  .  .  .  Heroism  is  an  obedience 
to  a  secret  impulse  of  an  individual's  character.  ...  It 
speaks  the  truth,  and  it  is  just,  generous,  hospitable,  tem 
perate.  .  .  .  it  is  of  an  undaunted  boldness,  and  of  a 
fortitude  not  to  be  wearied  out.  ...  If  we  dilate  in  be 
holding  the  Greek  energy,  the  Roman  pride,  it  is  that  we 
are  already  domesticating  the  same  sentiment.  Let  us  find 
room  for  the  great  guest  in  our  small  house.  .  .  .  That 
country  is  the  fairest,  which  is  inhabited  by  the  noblest 
minds.  The  pictures  which  fill  the  imagination  in  reading  the 
actions  of  Pericles,  Xenophon,  Columbus,  Bayard,  Sidney, 
Hampden,  teach  us  how  needlessly  mean  our  life  is,  that  we, 
by  the  depth  of  our  living,  should  deck  it  with  more  than 
regal  or  national  splendor,  and  act  on  principles  that  should 
interest  man  and  nature  in  the  length  of  our  days. 

And  finally,  I  must  quote  one  line  on  heroism 
which  deserves  to  stand  by  itself : 

The  day  never  shines  in  which  this  element  may  not 
work. 

The  next  volume,  entitled  Essays,  Second  Series 
(published  in  1844),  has  nine  subjects.  You 
should  read  "  The  Poet "  to  learn  what  his  defini- 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON.  73 

tion  is  of  a  poet,  of  genius,  of  imagination,  and 
how  poems  came  to  be  written.  Read  "  Charac 
ter" —  pausing  over  that  fifth  paragraph,  where 
he  says : 

The  reason  why  we  feel  one  man's  presence,  and  do  not 
feel  another's,  is  as  simple  as  gravity.  Truth  is  the  summit 
of  being;  justice  is  the  application  of  it  to  affairs.  All  in 
dividuals  stand  in  a  scale,  according  to  the  purity  of  this 
element  in  them. 

Read  "  Manners  "  (but  it  is  not  so  fine  as  the 
essay  on  "  Behavior,"  to  which  we  come  in  the 
next  volume,  where  you  are  told  that  a  beautiful 
behavior  "  is  the  finest  of  the  fine  arts  ") ;  and 
read  "  Nature,"  for  the  sake  of  some  delicious 
passages. 

In  1860  appeared  the  third  volume  of  this  char 
acter,  with  the  title,  Conduct  of  Life,  numbering 
nine  essays,  the  best  of  which  for  you  are  "  Power," 
"Wealth,"  "Culture,"  "Behavior,"  "Considera 
tions  by  the  Way,"  and  "  Beauty." 

In  "Power"  are  such  thought-quickening  sen 
tences  as  these  : 


74        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

There  is  always  room  for  a  man  of  force,  and  he  makes 
room  for  many.  .  .  .  Concentration  is  the  secret  of 
strength.  ...  in  all  management  of  human  affairs.  . 

.  .  In  human  action,  against  the  spasm  of  energy,  we 
offset  the  continuity  of  drill.  .  .  .  Practice  is  nine 
tenths. 

Even  to  such  an  unlikely  theme  as  "  Wealth  "  he 
can  bring  his  golden  truths ;  thus :  ~ 

Do  your  work,  respecting  the  excellence  of  the  work,  and 
not  its  acceptableness.  .  .  .  Nothing  is  beneath  you,  if 
it  is  in  the  direction  of  your  life. 

On  "Behavior,"  courtesy,  manners,  he  can 
never  say  enough  —  away  back  in  an  earlier  paper 
is  this  crystal : 

The  whole  of  heraldry  and  chivalry  is  in  courtesy.  A  man 
of  fine  manners  shall  pronounce  your  name  with  all  the 
ornament  that  titles  of  nobility  could  ever  add. 

And  now  it  is  : 

Manners  are  the  happy  way  of  doing  things.  .  .  .  No 
man  can  resist  their  influence.  .  .  .  There  are  certain 
manners  which  are  learned  in  good  society  of  that  force, 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON.  75 

that,  if  a  person  have  them,  he  or  she  must  be  considered, 
and  is  everywhere  welcome,  though  without  beauty,  wealth, 
or  genius.  ...  I  have  seen  manners  that  make  a  simi 
lar  impression  with  personal  beauty ;  that  give  the  light  ex 
hilaration,  and  refine  us  like  that.  .  .  .  But  they  must 
be  marked  by  fine  perception,  the  acquaintance  with  real 
beauty.  .  .  .  Then  they  must  be  inspired  by  the  good 
heart.  There  is  no  beautifier  of  complexion,  or  form ,  or  be 
havior,  like  the  wish  to  scatter  joy  and  not  pain  around  us. 

That  sentence  I  could  not  resist  having  in 
italics.  It  deserves  to  be  written  with  a  diamond 
point.  The  man  who  wrote  it  had  the  most 
charming  manner;  his  bearing  was  courtesy  it 
self;  his  countenance  was  benignant,  and  so 
radiant  with  inward  light  that  one  of  his  biogra 
phers,  Dr.  Holmes,  speaks  of  it  as  "  luminous." 
None  had  a  better  right  to  put  on  paper  these 
sentiments  and  rules  of  conduct,  for  he  knew  in 
his  own  life  the  meaning  of  sincerity,  integrity,  af 
fability,  heroism,  courtesy,  culture  of  all  that  was 
noble  and  sweet.  He  says  in  the  next  essay: 

I  wish  that  life  should  not  be  cheap,  but  sacred.  .  .  . 
Do  not  make  life  hard  to  any. 


j6        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

He  said  it  was  a  social  crime  to  discourage  the 
young,  and  that  "  power  dwells  with  cheerfulness, 
hope  puts  us  in  a  working  mood."  If  any  morbid 
or  disheartening  line  was  ever  written  by  Emer 
son,  I  have  failed  to  find  it.  On  the  contrary,  he 
constantly  helps  one  upward  towards  the  sun 
shine.  They  were  morning  thoughts  that  were 
his,  which  could  front  the  auroral  freshness  of 
the  new  day.  Sage  and  seer,  mystic  and  philoso 
pher  though  he  was,  he  had  an  almost  child-like 
artlessness  of  nature,  with  an  immortal  youthful- 
ness  and  buoyancy  about  him.  You  would  have 
found  him  most  companionable  if  you  could  have 
had  the  delight  of  being  with  him  in  a  ramble 
about  Concord ;  unspoiled  and  unspoilable  ;  lov 
ing  beauty,  seeing  beauty  everywhere,  his  imagi 
nation  clothed  even 

the  palpable  and  the  familiar 
With  golden  exhalations  of  the  dawn. 

You  have  his  tenderness  and  child-like-ness,  his 
simplicity  and  acceptance  of  an  everyday  truth  in 
these  lines  in  his  exquisite  poem  to  the  Rhodora : 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON.  77 

Rhodora !  If  the  sages  ask  thee  why 

This  charm  is  wasted  on  the  marsh  and  sky, 

Dear,  tell  them  that  if  eyes  were  made  for  seeing, 

Then  beauty  is  its  own  excuse  for  being; 

Why  thou  wert  there,  O  rival  of  the  rose ! 

I  never  thought  to  ask,  I  never  knew ; 

But  in  my  simple  ignorance  suppose 

The  self-same  power  that  brought  me  there  brought  you. 

For  title  of  the  fourth  volume  (published  in 
1870)  he  had  Society  and  Solitude,  containing  twelve 
essays,  the  best  of  which  for  you  are  "  Art,"  "  Elo 
quence,"  "  Domestic  Life,"  "  Books,"  and,  if  you 
have  time  for  more,  "  Courage  "  and  "  Success." 

That  on  "  Domestic  Life  "  gives  you  an  insight 
into  the  home-side  of  Emerson.  He  was  warmly 
attached  to  his  own  fireside  and  the  happy  circle 
around  it,  as  you  will  see  in  some  of  his  letters  to 
Carlyle,  where  he  says  : 

But  at  home  I  am  rich,  rich  enough  for  ten  brothers.  My 
wife  Lidian  is  an  incarnation  of  Christianity  —  I  call  her 
Asia.  .  .  .  my  mother,  whitest,  mildest,  most  conserva 
tive  of  ladies.  .  .  .  my  boy  a  piece  of  love  and  sun 
shine,  well  worth  my  watching  from  morning  till  night. 


78        PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

Again,  of  his  little  girl,  of  the  Ellen  who  was 
such  a  stay  and  comfort  to  him  in  his  declining 
years  : 

The  softest,  gracefulest  little  maiden  alive,  creeping  like 
a  turtle  with  head  erect  all  about  the  house.  .  .  .  The 
boy  has  two  deep  wells  for  eyes,  into  which  I  gladly  peer 
when  I  am  tired. 

It  was  this  loving  and  lovely  boy  of  whom  he 
had  to  write  not  long  after  that  he  had  "  ended 
his  earthly  life,"  and  "  A  few  weeks  ago  I  ac 
counted  myself  a  very  rich  man,  and  now  the 
poorest  of  all ; "  in  lament  for  whom  he  poured  out 
his  heart  in  the  poem  called  "  Threnody,"  which 
is  a  father's  fond,  pathetic  lingering  over  things 
and  places  made  dear  by  the  little  one  who  had 
gone  : 

His  daily  haunts  I  well  discern  — 
The  poultry  yard,  the  shed,  the  barn  — 
And  every  inch  of  garden  ground 
Paced  by  the  blessed  feet  around, 
From  the  roadside  to  the  brook 
Where  into  he  loved  to  look. 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON.  79 

Hop  the  meek  birds  where  erst  they  ranged, 
The  wintry  garden  lies  unchanged, 
The  brook  into  the  stream  runs  on ; 
But  the  deep-eyed  boy  is  gone. 

The  last  volume  of  essays  (in  1876),  is  Letters 
and  Social  Aims,  numbering  eleven  subjects.  That 
on  "  Poetry  and  Imagination  "  covers  a  good  deal 
of  ground  and  is  worth  your  careful  study  —  first 
defining  what  common  sense  is,  and  then  showing 
how  all  mankind  delight  in  the  poetic  and  imagi 
native,  it  touches  your  own  experience  and  un 
spoken  thoughts.  You  will  enjoy  meditating  a 
little  on  his  explanation  of  poetry  as  "  the  perpet 
ual  endeavor  to  express  the  spirit  of  the  thing." 
In  "  Social  Aims "  you  meet  him  again  with  a 
message  on  manners,  cultivation,  conversation, 
society.  Here  is  a  sample  of  his  dainty  way  of 
putting  things : 

I  think  Hans  Andersen's  story  of  the  cobweb  cloth  woven 
so  fine  that  it  was  invisible  —  woven  for  the  king's  garment 
—  must  mean  manners,  which  do  really  clothe  a  princely  na 
ture. 


8o        PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

Read  "  Eloquence."  Read  "  Resources,"  to  be 
reminded  "  that  this  world  belongs  to  the  ener 
getic,  that  there  is  always  a  way  to  everything 
desirable,"  that  courage  puts  a  new  face  on  every 
thing  ;  and  read  "  Greatness "  that  you  may  re 
spect  yourself  more,  seek  the  best  things,  and  live 
for  the  highest  good. 

Thus  the  five  volumes  properly  called  "  Essays," 
of  which  if  you  are  to  choose  one  for  your  own 
library  (supposing  you  can  have  no  more),  and  one 
at  least  you  ought  to  have,  let  your  choice  be  Con 
duct  of  Life  —  suggestive  title  !  —  but  then,  how 
suggestive  he  is!  His  imagination  plays  like 
sheet  lightning,  at  unexpected  moments,  yet  how 
much  you  see  in  a  flash  of  it ! 

You  will  meet  with  many  exaggerated  state 
ments  in  his  writings,  some  things  that  have  a 
ludicrous  aspect,  some  hard  knots,  some  seeming 
contradictions,  with  much  that  is  erratic,  quite  out 
of  the  common  line  Emersonian.  You  will  be 
stopped  by  thoughts  which  you  cannot  understand, 
and  by  others  that  you  cannot  accept.  But  even 
thus  encumbered,  the  common-sense  of  Emerson 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON.  8 1 

will  be  evident  enough  to  you — and  most  admir 
able  common  sense  he  had.  He  was  shrewd,  wise 
and  practical,  as  it  will  not  have  taken  you  till  this 
time  to  find  out.  That  was  one  side  of  him  —  the 
side  with  which  you  have  to  do.  The  other,  the 
transcendental,  you  will,  as  I  have  intimated,  do 
well  to  let  alone.  You  would  become  bewildered, 
lose  your  balance,  get  no  good  from  his  meaning, 
even  if  you  could  find  it.  Even  his  best  friends 
did  not  always  feel  at  home  with  him  when  he  had 
on  his  robes  as  a  mystic  and  a  "  Pantheist." 

You  are  not  to  look  on  the  above  as  the  only 
books  of  his  for  your  reading.  By  no  means  pass 
by  English  Traits,  which  is  not  a  record  of  travel 
or  description  of  places  after  the  usual  manner. 
He  takes  the  measure  of  the  English  people  ;  con 
siders  what  England  is  —  to  see  which  country 
well,  he  says,  needs  a  hundred  years.  For  most 
excellent  examples  of  condensation  of  thought, 
virile  and  graphic,  read  the  chapters  on  "  Land," 
"  Race,"  "  Ability,"  "  Manners,"  "  Truth,"  "  Char 
acter,"  "Aristocracy,"  and  "Literature." 

Another  volume  which  he  evidently  had  keen 


82         PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

enjoyment  in  writing,  for  he  was  a  hero- worship 
per,  is  Representative  Men,  treating  of  certain  lead 
ers  who  were  either  great  thinkers  or  men  of  deeds  : 
namely,  Plato,  or  the  Philosopher ;  Swedenborg, 
or  the  Mystic  ;  Montaigne,  or  the  Skeptic ;  Shake 
speare,  or  the  Poet ;  Napoleon,  or  the  Man  of 
the  World ;  Goethe,  or  the  Writer.  Lectures,  ad 
dresses,  miscellanies,  poems  swell  the  amount  of 
his  works  to  a  long  list,  but  those  mentioned  above 
furnish  you  with  ample  material  for  all  the  time 
you  can  now  give  to  this  author  and  for  all  that  is 
profitable  for  you. 

It  is  for  his  manhood  as  well  as  genius  that 
Emerson  deserves  our  reverent  admiration ;  for 
his  life  and  the  thoughts  he  contributed  to  Amer 
ican  literature  belong  together  in  no  ordinary 
sense.  He  did  not  write  one  thing  and  live 
another ;  his  nature  was  transparent ;  his  heart 
was  loyal  to  the  truth  whose  zealous  knight  he 
was ;  therefore,  because  a  pure,  aspiring  and  sin 
cere  man  was  back  of  the  words  he  uttered,  those 
words  have  immortal  life  in  them. 

Nowhere  was  he  more  loved  and  honored  than 


RALPH    WALDO    EMERSON.  83 

by  his  neighbors,  in  the  historic  town  of  Concord 
which  was  his  home  for  the  greater  part  of  his  life. 
He  was  born  in  Boston,  May  25,  1803,  but  went  to 
Concord  (the  home  of  his  forefathers),  in  1834,  and 
there  he  died  on  the  2-jth  of  April,  1882.  His 
first  dwelling-place  was  the  old  Manse  so  familiar 
from  Hawthorne's  sketches ;  afterwards  he  went 
to  live  in  the  square,  white  house  on  the  Lexing 
ton  road  which  everybody  who  has  ever  been  to 
that  old  town  must  remember,  with  the  pine  trees 
about  it,  the  front-yard  and  garden ;  an  unpreten 
tious  house  with  plenty  of  windows  and  a  sort  of 
hospitable  look,  as  if  every  passer  was  invited  to 
walk  down  the  flagstones  and  in  at  the  open  door. 
Sure  of  a  welcome,  it  was  said;  and  hospitality 
ought  to  have  been  graven  on  its  lintels,  for  Emer 
son  delighted  to  be  host  to  the  stranger,  to  his 
townsfolk,  to  the  little  children  and  to  the  young 
people  especially  for  whose  pleasure  he  did  so 
much,  taking  his  reward  in  the  sight  of  beaming 
faces;  and  now,  when  he  is  lying  in  beautiful 
Sleepy  Hollow  Cemetery,  those  village  girls,  whose 
aspirations  he  quickened,  to  whom  he  was  helper 


84        PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

and   friend,  show   their   loving  remembrance   by 
keeping  fresh  flowers  on  his  grave. 

As  you  know,  the  Concord  School  of  Philosophy 
devoted  six  or  seven  days  to  Emerson  —  an  Emer 
son  week  — when  such  writers  and  thinkers  as  Mrs. 
Howe,  Elizabeth  Peabody,  Doctor  Bartol,  Doctor 
W.  T.  Harris  and  others  discussed  him  ;  for  in 
stance,  as  a  poet,  as  an  essayist,  as  an  American, 
considering  every  aspect  of  the  man,  and  paying 
tribute  to  his  personal  worth,  his  affability,  and 
his  high-mindedness. 

NOTE.  —  The  principal  works  of  Emerson  are  Essays 
(First  Series),  Essays  (Second  Series),  Representative  Men, 
Conduct  of  Life,  Society  and  Solitude,  Miscellanies,  besides 
various  Lectures,  Addresses,  brief  Biographies  and  other 
papers.  The  Literary  World for  May,  1880,  has  a  bibliogra 
phy  and  a  list  of  writings  on  Emerson  up  to  that  time,  and 
the  same  journal  for  July  15,  1882,  has  a  concordance  by 
W.  S.  Kennedy,  furnishing  a  partial  index  to  familiar  pas 
sages  in  his  poems.  Of  several  biographies,  that  by  George 
W.  Cook  has  been  commended  as  being  "  a  careful  and 
thorough  analysis"  of  his  teachings;  that  by  Alfred  H. 
Guernsey  treats  of  him  as  philosopher  and  poet ;  Moncure 
D.  Conway  wrote  of  "  Emerson  at  Home  and  Abroad ; " 
Alexander  Ireland's  is  a  "  Biographical  Sketch,"  and  the 
recent  one  by  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes,  in  the  "  American 
Men  of  Letters  "  Series,  is  genial  and  discriminating,  a  run 
ning  biography  done  by  the  hand  of  a  warm  friend,  with 
dashes  of  criticism  and  comment,  interspersed  with  bits  out 
of  Emerson's  writings. 


NATHANIEL    HAWTHORNE. 


V. 


NATHANIEL   HAWTHORNE. 

WE  come  now  to  an  author  whose  writings 
are  of  the  finest  quality  known  in  our 
literature.  Of  Hawthorne  it  has  been  said  that 
he  had  "  a  grace,  a  charm,  a  perfection  of  lan 
guage  which  no  other  American  writer  ever  pos 
sessed  in  the  same  degree,"  and  that  his  English 
was  "the  most  beautiful  that  ever  was  written." 

The  number  of  volumes  he  produced  was  small ; 
compared  with  those  of  Cooper  and  of  Irving  how 
brief  is  the  list !  But  all  his  work  has  a  strong 
individuality  —  it  has  the  Hawthorne  stamp,  sign- 
manual  upon  it ;  and  the  three  novels  The  Scarlet 
Letter,  The  House  of  the  Seven  Gables  and  The 
Marble  Faun  hold  a  commanding  place  in  the  lit 
erature  of  fiction.  The  first  named  (and  perhaps 
the  others)  will  always  be  counted  in  with  a  se- 
87 


88        PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

lected  number  of  the  best  novels  of  modern  times , 
with  Les  Miserable*  of  Victor  Hugo,  The  Newcomes 
of  Thackeray,  George  Eliot's  Adam  Bede,  Romola^ 
and  Middkmarch,  Charlotte  Bronte's  Jane  Eyre 
and  Villette,  Scott's  Ivanhoe,  Blackmore's  Lorna 
Doone,  Dickens'  David  Copperfield,  with  that  great 
work  of  Mrs.  Stowe,  Unck  Tom's  Cabin. 

Of  Hawthorne's  life  you  must  already  know  the 
leading  facts.  He  was  born  in  Salem,  Massa 
chusetts,  July  4th,  1804.  The  house  was  21 
Union  street.  I  tell  you  this  because  if  you  should 
happen  to  be  in  that  ancient,  odd,  delightful  little 
city  of  witch  memory,  you  may  like  to  go  there. 
You  will  find  it  in  a  narrow,  prosaic  street,  and 
opening  right  on  the  sidewalk  —  perhaps  when 
you  are  there  you  will  call  up  in  your  imagination 
a  little,  shy,  handsome  boy  with  wonderfully  bril 
liant,  lustrous  eyes  who  used  sometimes  to  sit  on 
the  doorstep  and  look  dreamily  down  towards  the 
shipping  seen  in  the  distance.  Back  of  it  there 
used  to  be  a  garden  where  he  said  he  "  rolled  on 
a  grass-plat  under  an  apple-tree,  and  picked  abun 
dant  currants." 


NATHANIEL    HAWTHORNE.  89 

Thi§  garden  extended  back  to  Herbert  street, 
where  at  Number  to,  is  the  Manning  House,  the 
old  family  mansion  of  his  mother,  in  which  he 
lived  at  various  times ;  and  it  is  especially  inter 
esting  because  there,  in  the  "  haunted  chamber," 
which  was  "  the  antechamber  of  his  fame,"  he 
says,  after  leaving  college,  "  I  sat  myself  down  to 
consider  what  pursuit  in  life  I  was  best  fit  for. 
.  .  .  And  year  after  year  I  kept  on  consider 
ing  what  I  was  fit  for,  and  time  and  my  destiny 
decided  that  I  was  to  be  the  writer  that  I  am." 
He  had  read  "endlessly  all  sorts  of  good  and 
good-for-nothing  books,"  had  made  a  special,  ar 
tistic  study  of  novels,  and  had  scribbled  sketches 
and  stories,  most  of  which  he  burned ;  a  few  of 
them,  however,  began  to  appear  in  magazines  and 
in  the  "  annuals  "  of  those  days,  without  his  name, 
but  attracting  attention  by  the  subtlety  of  imag 
ination  shown  in  them  and  by  their  fine  literary 
workmanship ;  and  in  1837,  when  he  was  nearly 
a  middle-aged  man,  the  first  volume  of  Twice  Told 
Tales  was  published.  He  had  become  known  as 
a  man  of  letters. 


QO        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

In  that  "  tall,  ugly,  old,  grayish  "  house^these 
are  his  adjectives),  he  lived  in  great  seclusion, 
taking  his  walks  at  twilight,  making  few  acquaint 
ances,  only  coming  out  of  his  "  owls'  nest "  at 
last  when  his  book  made  him  known  and  he  was 
compelled  into  society ;  but  in  that  quiet  and 
solitude  he  seems  to  have  been  able  to  discipline 
his  mind  for  the  work  before  him.  Those  were 
years  of  preparation,  whether  he  had  a  conscious 
ness  of  it  or  not.  The  chamber  in  which  he  kept 
his  vigils  is  pointed  out  —  a  low-posted  room, 
with  a  beam  in  sight,  a  corner  cupboard,  one 
window  looking  off  over  distant  tree-tops  to  Mar- 
blehead,  and  another  down  into  the  little  back 
garden  of  the  house  where  he  was  born. 

If  you  go  out  for  a  stroll  about  Salem,  you  will 
inquire  for  the  Town  Pump ;  and  for  the  House 
of  the  Seven  Gables,  where  poor  old  Hepsibah 
set  out  the  little  store  of  toys  in  the  shop  window, 
and  where  Phoebe  flitted  about  like  a  butterfly. 
And  probably  some  of  whom  you  inquire  will  say 
that  it  is  that  building,  or  that  one,  just  as  they 
told  me  about  Skipper  Ireson's  down  at  Marble- 


NATHANIEL    HAWTHORNE.  91 

head ;  but  that  Hawthorne  really  had  any  one 
house  in  mind  is  not  certain.  Tradition  says  he 
had,  and  one  in  particular  will  be  pointed  out  to 
you,  and  you  will  believe  it,  just  as  I  wanted  to, 
and  would,  and  did.  As  for  the  Custom  House  — 
there  it  is,  real  and  tangible,  with  the  old,  decay 
ing  Derby  wharf  stretching  down  in  front.  Some 
body  will  show  you  where  Hawthorne  purported 
to  discover  the  manuscript  of  The  Scarlet  Letter, 
and  if  you  ask,  you  will  be  told  where  you  must 
go  to  see  the  old  red  desk  at  which  he  wrote. 

See  Salem,  by  all  means.  It  is  the  Salem  of  the 
Lady  Arabella  Johnson  whom  you  all  have  known 
about  from  your  childhood,  of  Endicott,  of  the 
witches.  We  have  a  romantic  foolishness  about 
some  of  the  old  world  sea-towns,  but  this  corner 
of  New  England  is  as  rich  in  legendary  lore  as 
many  beyond  the  ocean.  And  what  an  East 
Indian  aroma  it  has,  as  of  spices  and  drugs 
brought  home  in  merchant  vessels  in  the  days 
when  the  willow  ware  and  esthetic  blue  china  that 
now  are  stored  in  the  corner  cupboards  were  in 
as  common  use  as  if  no  value  were  put  upon 


92       PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

them  1  You  know  that  Edmund  Gorse  when  he 
was  over  here  went  down  for  a  day  and  wandered 
about,  and  he  wrote : 

"  I  was  deeply  impressed  with  the  strange  sen 
timent  of  the  place,  and  walked  about  the  streets 
until  I  was  thoroughly  soaked  with  the  old  Puritan 
spirit." 

Those  last  words  may  be  said  to  represent  the 
state  of  Hawthorne's  mind.  The  early  traditions 
of  New  England  took  a  mighty  hold  on  him ; 
especially  was  he  wrought  upon  by  the  grimness 
and  severity  of  Puritan  life  and  character,  and 
from  the  incidents  with  which  he  was  familiar  he 
evolved,  by  the  subtle  processes  of  his  marvel 
lous  genius,  certain  great  moral  lessons.  Many 
of  his  short  stories  might  under  his  hand  have 
been  elaborated  into  a  novel  of  the  length  of  The 
Scarlet  Letter,  if  he  had  so  willed.  When  you 
read  that,  and  those  legends  of  his,  and  The 
House  of  the  Seven  Gables,  bear  in  mind  the  con 
scientious  fidelity  which  he  brought  to  his  task, 
and  his  intimate  knowledge  of  time  and  place 
and  circumstance.  Remember  that  Hawthorne  in 


NATHANIEL    HAWTHORNE.  93 

prose,  and  Whittier  in  poetry,  have  done  for  Puri 
tan  New  England,  and  for  that  particular  corner 
of  New  England,  what  no  other  writer  has  ever 
done,  and  no  coming  writer  can  do.  No  more 
can  Whittier's  ballads  and  legendary  verse  be 
surpassed  than  can  the  two  great  novels  of  Haw 
thorne,  in  their  imaginative  quality,  insight  into 
motives,  and  tragic  power. 

As  for  Salem  —  Hawthorne  is  as  inseparable 
from  that  old  city  as  is  the  air  that  is  over  and 
around  it.  To  the  Salem  life  belong  the  Twice 
Told  Tales,  some  of  which,  like  "  A  Rill  from  the 
Town  Pump,"  daguerreotype  the  very  streets. 
The  Scarlet  Letter  had  its  birth  there,  and  there 
also  belongs  (though  written  at  Lenox)  The  House 
of  the  Seven  Gables,  and  there  was  written  the 
lovely  story  which  his  children  could  almost  re 
peat  by  heart,  from  hearing  it  read  so  often,  "  The 
Snow  Image." 

If  you  go  to  Concord,  so  rich  in  its  associations 
with  Emerson,  Thoreau  and  the  Alcotts,  you 
come  right  upon  Hawthorne  again.  There  is  the 
old  Manse,  to  which  he  took  his  bride,  the  ex- 


94       PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

quisitely  lovely,  pensive  Sophia  Peabody;  there 
the  gifted,  first  child  Una,  darlingest  little  daugh 
ter,  was  born  (you  will  find  sweet  stories  about 
this  pet  "  Onion  "  of  his,  in  Julian  Hawthorne's 
biography  of  his  father  and  mother).  That  house 
is  full  of  Hawthorne.  Read  in  the  preface  to  the 
Mosses  from  an  old  Manse  and  in  some  of  the 
scraps  of  his  "  Note  Books  "  how  he  lived  there, 
and  how  he  wrote,  and  where,  and  how  happy  he 
was.  At  Concord  he  found  some  of  the  material 
of  The  Blithedale  Romance,  based,  as  you  know, 
upon  the  Brook  Farm  experiment  of  community 
of  labor. 

It  was  at  Concord  that  some  years  later  on  he 
bought  a  house,  The  Wayside,  next  to  Apple- 
Clump  (which  is  the  Alcott  home),  where  he  wrote 
the  second  Wonder  Book,  and  later,  after  return 
ing  from  Europe,  Our  Old  Home.  You  are  aware 
that  he  was  seven  years  away  from  this  country, 
a  part  of  the  time  as  consul  at  Liverpool,  the  re 
mainder  travelling  on  the  continent  and  living  in 
Italy,  and  that  he  came  home  to  settle  down  to 
domestic  comfort  and  literary  work  in  this  house 


NATHANIEL    HAWTHORNE.  '95 

of  his  own,  where  he  built  what  he  had  always 
longed  for,  a  tower  to  write  in.  Failing  in  health 
he  started  on  a  little  journey  to  the  White  Moun 
tains,  and  died  suddenly  at  Plymouth,  New 
Hampshire,  May  19,  1864,  and  was  buried  from 
The  Wayside  on  the  23d,  in  Sleepy  Hollow  Cem 
etery,  just  across  the  path  from  Thoreau. 

You  will  see  that  one  could  hardly  be  in  Salem 
or  Concord  without  having  him  constantly  in 
mind,  so  vitally  is  he  associated  with  these  two 
places. 

Of  all  his  books,  the  cheeriest,  wholesomest, 
most  delightsome  are  the  Wonder  Book  and  Tan- 
glcwood  Tales.  He  wrote  the  first  in  Lenox, 
Massachusetts,  where  he  lived  for  a  year  or  more 
in  a  very  frugal  way,  in  a  little  red  house  which  the 
family  called  the  Red  Shanty,  with  a  Tangtewood 
back  of  it.  Those  of  you  who  know  these  two 
charming  books  ought  to  know,  if  you  do  not, 
that  there  was  a  real  Tanglewood  porch,  and 
that  Shadow  Brook,  Bold  Summit,  and  the  Hill 
side  were  real  places  all,  and  that  the  man  who 
went  nutting  and  skating  and  sliding  down  hill 


96        PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

with  the  children  was  none  other  than  Hawthorne 
himself,  and  that  he  was  the  most  sunshiny,  gen 
ial,  exuberant  of  companions,  so  that  one  of 
them  said  "  there  never  was  such  a  playmate  in 
all  the  world " ;  anybody  must  be  an  enchanting 
story-teller  who  would  talk  like  this  before  he 
begun  a  tale : 

Sit  down  there  every  soul  of  you  and  be  as  still  as  so 
many  mice.  At  the  slightest  interruption,  whether  from 
great  naughty  Primrose,  little  Dandelion,  or  any  other,  I 
shall  bite  the  story  short  off  between  my  teeth,  and  swallow 
the  untold  part. 

Such  delicious  stories !  They  belong  with  the 
goodly  list,  by  best  authors,  made  for  children's 
delectation,  like  The  Water  Babies,  At  the  Back  of 
the  North  Wind,  and  The  King  of  the  Golden  River, 
books  which  have  thrown  older  people  into  a 
"  tumult  of  delight "  and  made  them  almost  wish 
they  were  children  again.  Hunt  up  the  originals 
of  the  Wonder  Book  stories  as  they  stand  in  the 
old  Greek  fables,  and  read  them  along  with  his 
fascinating  versions.  "  The  Golden  Touch  "  is 
the  story  of  Midas ;  "  The  Paradise  of  Children  " 


NATHANIEL    HAWTHORNE.  97 

is  that  of  Pandora,  and  so  on ;  but  oh !  what  a 
golden  touch  was  Hawthorne's.  Notice  his  mar 
vellous  skill,  and  the  beauty  of  his  language  as 
you  read ;  see  in  "  The  Gorgon's  Head "  how 
Mercury  is  described  when  he  meets  Perseus  in 
the  solitary  place !  And  what  could  be  lovelier 
than  all  there  is  about  Pegasus  in  "  The  Chi- 
maera  "  ? 

When  you  read  The  Marble  Faun  you  should 
look  up  every  thing  relating  to  the  statues  and 
architecture  he  describes,  for  example,  about  the 
"  Faun  of  Praxiteles  "  which  Donatello  resembled. 
What  a  world  will  open  to  you  !  What  winter 
evening's  entertainment  there  will  be !  This  ro 
mance  was  written  while  he  was  living  in  Italy, 
breathing  its  atmosphere,  amidst  pictures  and 
statues  and  antiquities.  There  was  romance  in 
the  daily  surroundings  of  the  Hawthorne  family, 
who  had  a  home  in  a  castle  so  big  that  each  one 
had  three  or  four  rooms,  while  more  than  twenty 
were  left  for  their  joint  occupancy. 

The  fanciful  story  itself  is  only  one  feature  ;  the 
art  criticism,  the  fine  "  points  "  he  makes  about 


98        PLEASANT   AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

old  painting  and  sculpture  have  always  given  it  a 
high  place  among  works  of  that  class  —  far  more 
common  now  than  when  he  wrote  it  —  and  taken 
all  in  all,  it  is  a  fine  illustration  of  Hawthorne's 
vagaries  and  of  his  style.  For  a  fine  bit,  dwell 
upon  that  description  of  Miriam's  studio  and  the 
fountain  in  the  court 

Everywhere  in  Hawthorne  you  find  perfection 
of  finish  without  loss  of  vigor ;  he  is  as  fine  as  he 
is  strong,  and  it  was  so  with  him  almost  from  the 
first.  When  or  how  he  acquired  that  gift  of  writing 
no  biographer  can  satisfactorily  tell,  but  he  had 
the  indefinable  quality  which  we  call  genius.  When 
you  come,  some  day,  to  understand  the  nice  dis 
tinction  between  that  and  talent,  you  will  see  why 
he  takes  rank  with  men  of  genius. 

It  has  been  stated  again  and  again  that  his 
manuscript  had  scarcely  any  erasures  or  changes, 
and  few  or  no  italics.  He  had  the  skill  of  so 
choosing  and  so  using  his  words  that  there  was  no 
need  to  emphasize  —  the  thought  expressed  itself. 
There  was  some  kind  of  a  crystallizing  process  in 
his  own  mind  that  not  many  writers  are  capable 


NATHANIEL    HAWTHORNE.  99 

of.     He  meditated  upon  his  subject,  forged  at  it, 
hammered,  wrought,  finished  it  in  his  seclusion. 

If  you  wish  to  see  what  he  could  do  with  very 
scanty  material  read  "  The  old  Apple  Dealer." 
You  will  say  that  it  is  of  no  account.  The  man 
did  nothing,  was  nobody,  said  nothing  and  noth 
ing  happened.  His  was  a  character  whose  pecu 
liarity  consisted  in  having  nothing  peculiar  about 
it ;  all  neutral  tints,  all  negative  qualities,  passive ; 
but  in  the  hands  of  Hawthorne,  the  old  apple 
dealer  sitting  in  the  shadow  of  the  "  Old  South  " 
is  made  the  centre  of  a  masterly  piece  of  work 
manship.  I  might  call  your  attention  to  "  The 
Ambitious  Guest,"  "Fancy's  Show-box,"  "The 
gentle  Boy  "  (who  was  Hawthorne  himself,  accord 
ing  to  his  sister-in-law,  Miss  Elizabeth  Peabody), 
and  "The  Village  Uncle,"  where  a  little  sweet 
heart  of  his  is  the  figure  which  he  sketches  ;  here 
she  is,  the  sweet  Susan,  taken  from  life  : 

You  stood  on  the  little  bridge  over  the  brook  that  runs 
across  King's  Beach  into  the  sea.  It  was  twilight ;  the 
waves  rolling  in,  the  wind  sweeping  by,  the  crimson  clouds 
fading  in  the  west,  and  the  silver  moon  brightening  above 


100     PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

the  hill ;  and  on  the  bridge  were  you,  fluttering  in  the 
breeze  like  a  sea-bird  that  might  skim  away  at  your  pleas 
ure.  You  seemed  a  daughter  of  the  viewless  wind,  a  crea 
ture  of  the  ocean  foam  and  the  crimson  light,  whose  merry 
life  was  spent  in  dancing  on  the  crests  of  the  billows,  that 
threw  up  their  spray  to  support  your  footsteps.  As  I  drew 
nearer,  I  fancied  you  akin  to  the  race  of  mermaids,  and 
thought  how  pleasant  it  would  be  to  dwell  with  you  among 
the  quiet  coves,  in  the  shadow  of  the  cliffs,  and  to  roam 
among  secluded  beaches  of  the  purest  sand,  and  when  our 
northern  shores  grew  bleak,  to  haunt  the  islands,  green  and 
lonely,  far  amid  summer  seas.  And  yet  it  gladdened  me, 
after  all  this  nonsense,  to  find  "you  nothing  but  a  pretty 
young  girl,  sadly  perplexed  with  the  rude  behavior  of  the 
wind  about  your  petticoats. 

That  is  a  sample  of  Hawthorne's  style  of  writing 
at  the  very  first,  pure  and  limpid  as  water. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  indicate  which  of  his  short 
papers  you  should  select,  for  you  will  read  them 
all.  For  a  piece  of  work  artistic  in  its  complete 
ness,  and  at  the  same  time  showing  the  fanciful 
turn  of  his  mind,  there  is  nothing  that  better  rep 
resents  him  in  small  space  than  "  David  Swan  " 
—  you  will  perhaps  need  to  read  it  several  times 
to  appreciate  its  quality.  In  the  tales  and  sketches 


NATHANIEL  HAWTHORNE.         IOI 

you  will  find  three  classes,  of  which  his  "  Fire 
Worship  "  furnishes  one  example  ;  a  second  is 
illustrated  by  "  Legends  of  the  Province  House," 
and  the  third  is  something  of  the  fantasy  kind 
which  he  liked  to  work  out  in  a  weird  way,  like 
"The  Artist  of  the  Beautiful"  and  "Brown's 
Wooden  Image." 

His  novels  have  grewsome  things  in  them. 
There  never  could  be  anything  more  terrible  in 
its  realism,  more  sickening  in  its  minuteness, 
than  the  eighteenth  chapter  of  The  House  of  the 
Seven  Gables,  where  the  Judge  is  dead ;  but  you 
should  read  it,  full  of  horrors  as  it  is,  to  see  what 
the  English  language  is  capable  of  in  a  master's 
hand.  Deeply  tragic  though  some  of  the  events 
are  that  Hawthorne  treats  of,  you  will  perceive 
before  you  have  gone  far  that  he  is  dealing  with 
great  questions  of  right  and  wrong.  Robert  Coll- 
yer  says  that  no  works  of  fiction  can  be  found 
"  stronger  in  moral  fibre  "  than  his.  He  does  not 
allow  sin  to  be  covered  up,  but  there  is  an  assert 
ing  of  conscience,  an  inward  retribution  which 
awaits  and  overtakes  the  evil-doer.  How  vigi- 


102      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

lantly  his  eye  searched  into  motive,  and  what  a 
probing  power  he  had  !  It  was  not  his  habit  to 
depict  characters,  as  Mrs.  Stowe  does ;  but  he 
had  certain  problems  of  destiny  to  work  out,  and 
he  created  human  beings  to  be  the  object  and 
subject,  and  when  they  were  once  in  his  hand 
there  was  no  parleying  with  the  wrong  they  had 
done.  It  has  been  said  that  the  character  of 
Arthur  Dimmesdale  in  The  Scarkt  Letter  is  a  page 
from  the  Book  of  Judgment. 

Yet  he  could  make  some  exquisite  beings,  and 
has  given  us  two  lovely  types  of  maidenhood,  in 
Phoebe  and  Hilda,  both  of  whom  are  said  to  have 
traits  of  his  wife.  In  The  House  of  the  Seven 
Gables  you  will  see  where  the  sweet  little  country 
girl  comes  in  like  a  sunbeam,  and  how  by  a  few 
dainty,  dexterous  touches  she  throws  "a  kindly 
and  hospitable  smile  "  over  the  cheerless  chamber 
that  Hepzibah  had  given  her,  and  how  she  bright 
ens  the  old  house,  and  how  pretty  and  housewifely 
her  ways  are.  And  let  me  remind  you  that  Haw 
thorne  used  to  call  his  wife  "  Phcebe,"  which 
shows  what  favorites  the  name  and  maiden  were ! 


NATHANIEL     HAWTHORNE.  103 

But  it  is  in  Hilda  in  The  Marble  Faun  we  see 
more  likeness  to  the  wife  whose  rare,  pure  face  is 
to  be  seen  in  Julian  Hawthorne's  biography, 
before  spoken  of.  If  there  was  only  space  to 
quote  all,  instead  of  this  fragment : 

She  was  pretty  at  all  times,  in  our  native  New  England 
style,  with  her  light  brown  ringlets,  her  delicately  tinged 
but  healthful  cheek,  her  sensitive,  intelligent,  yet  most  femi 
nine  and  kindly  face.  But  every  few  moments  this  pretty 
and  girlish  face  grew  beautiful  and  striking,  as  some  inward 
thought  and  feeling  brightened,  rose  to  the  surface,  and 
then,  as  it  were,  passed  out  again.  ...  So  that  it  really 
seemed  as  if  Hilda  were  only  visible  by  the  sunshine  of  her 
soul. 

Hawthorne's  family  life  was  in  the  sweetest, 
tenderest  atmosphere,  his  marriage  was  an  ideally 
happy  one.  He  educated  his  children  as  far  as 
possible  at  home,  and  was  very  careful  of  his 
little  daughters.  The  pictures  of  his  home  are 
delightful.  Towards  the  very  close,  at  The  Way 
side,  we  have  a  glimpse  of  him  reading  all  of 
Scott's  novels  to  his  wife  and  children,  and  Julian 
says: 


104      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

"There  was  no  conceivable  entertainment 
which  they  would  not  have  postponed  in  favor  of 
this  presentation  of  Scott  through  the  medium  of 
Hawthorne.  I  have  never  since  ventured  to  open 
the  Waverley  Novels." 

This  son  when  a  child  used  to  wonder  why  his 
father  need  write  books.  "  He  was  a  very  good 
and  satisfactory  father  without  that."  Such  was 
Hawthorne,  the  man. 

NOTE.  —  Hawthorne's  most  important  books  are  (this  is 
the  order  for  you)  Grandfather'' s  Chair,  The  Wonder  Book, 
Tanglewood  Tales,  The  Snow  Image,  Twice  Told  Tales, 
Mosses  from  an  old  Manse,  Our  old  Home,  Note  Books 
(American,  English,  French  and  Italian),  The  House  of  the 
Seven  Gables,  The  Scarlet  Letter,  The  Blithedale  Romance, 
The  Marble  Faun.  There  is  A  Study  of  Hawthorne,  by  his 
son-in-law,  George  P.  Lathrop,  a  biography,  Nathaniel  Haw~ 
thorne  and  his  Wife,  by  Julian  Hawthorne,  a  biography  by 
James  Russell  Lowell  in  the  American  Men  of  Letters 
Series ;  and  one  in  the  English  Men  of  Letters  Series. 

That  by  Julian  will  give  you  most  about  Hawthorne  as  a 
man.  There  is  also  a  useful  Analytical  Index  to  his  works, 
in  "  Little  Classic  "  form. 


HARRIET    BEECHER    STOWE. 


VL 


HARRIET   BEECHER   STOWE. 

YOU  need  no  introduction  to  the  lady  whose 
name  stands  there,  for  even  if  you  are  un 
acquainted  with  other  books  of  hers  —  which  is 
not  at  all  probable  —  you  know  Unck  Tom's  Cabin 
better  than  you  do  your  spelling-book,  and  you 
are  on  as  good  terms  with  "  Topsy "  as  with 
your  own  black  cat  that  you  named  for  her.  Not 
the  slightest  need  of  saying  anything  about  a 
book  so  popular  all  over  the  world,  and  in  more 
languages  than  I  can  enumerate ;  as  Dr.  Holmes 
read,  at  the  garden-party  in  honor  of  Mrs.  Stowe's 
seventieth  birthday : 

Briton  and  Frenchman,  Swede  and  Dane, 
Turk,  Spaniard,  Tartar  of  Ukraine, 
Hidalgo,  Cossack,  Cadi, 
107 


108     PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

High  Dutchman  and  Low  Dutchman,  too, 
The  Russian  serf,  the  Polish  Jew, 
Arab,  Armenian  and  Mantchoo 
Would  shout,  "  We  know  the  lady ! " 

There  are  two  other  forms  of  her  literary  work, 
showing  other  phases  of  her  genius,  that  you  are 
now  to  have  brought  before  you  —  her  representa 
tions  of  New  England  life  and  character,  as  shown 
in  such  books  as  Oldtown  Folks,  and  her  every 
day  sort  of  wisdom,  of  which  the  House  and  Home 
Papers  are  example. 

Mrs.  Stowe  is  a  genuine  New  Englander,  with 
the  deepest  sense  of  Yankee  humor,  and  the 
most  thorough  appreciation  of  the  picturesqueness 
of  old-fashioned  life.  If  you  wish  to  see  one  of 
her  most  characteristic  chapters  and  a  capital 
sample  of  her  off-hand,  ready  way  of  writing,  take 
the  opening  one  of  The  Minister's  Wooing.  Notice 
the  happy  tact  in  getting  started : 

Mrs.  Katy  Scudder  had  invited  Mrs.  Brown  and  Mrs. 
Jones,  and  Deacon  Twitchel's  wife  to  take  tea  with  her  on 
the  afternoon  of  June  second,  A.  D.  17  — 

When  one  has  a  story  to  tell,  one  is  always  puzzled  which 


HARRIET    BEECHER    STOWE.  log 

end  of  it  to  begin  at.  You  have  a  whole  corps  of  people  to 
introduce  that  you  know  and  your  reader  doesn't ;  and  one 
thing  so  pre-supposes  another,  that  whichever  way  you  turn 
your  patch-work,  the  figures  still  seem  ill-arranged.  The 
small  item  which  I  have  given  will  do  as  well  as  any  other 
to  begin  with,  as  it  will  certainly  lead  you  to  ask,  "  Pray, 
who  was  Mrs.  Katy  Scudder  ?  "  —  and  this  will  start  me 
systematically  on  my  story. 

By  the  time  you  have  read  so  far,  you  will  feel 
sure  that  your  author  knows  what  she  is  about, 
and  that  she  is  going  to  act  on  a  principle  she 
once  laid  down  for  those  who  desire  to  become 
writers  :  "  FIRST  THINK  WHAT  YOU  WANT  TO  SAY, 
AND  THEN  SAY  IT."  Before  you  have  turned  the 
second  leaf,  you  will  have  become  aware  of  another 
thing  —  that  that  quick,  bright  brain  of  hers  is 
peopled  with  New  England  characters,  of  whom 
Mrs.  Katy  Scudder  is  a  representative  as  one 
possessing  "faculty,"  which  is  a  quality  indige 
nous  to  that  locality.  Here  follows  a  part  of 
Mrs.  Stowe's  exposition  of  it : 

Faculty  is  the  greatest  virtue,  and  shiftlessness  the  great 
est  vice  of  Yankee  men  and  women.  To  her  who  has  fac- 


110     PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

ulty  nothing  shall  be  impossible.  She  shall  scrub  floors, 
wash,  wring,  bake,  brew,  and  yet  her  hands  shall  be  small 
and  white;  she  shall  have  no  perceptible  income,  yet  be 
always  handsomely  dressed ;  she  shall  have  not  a  servant 
in  her  house,  —  with  a  dairy  to  manage,  hired  men  to  feed, 
a  boarder  or  two  to  care  for,  unheard-of  pickling  and  pre 
serving  to  do,  —  and  yet  you  commonly  see  her  every  after 
noon  sitting  at  her  shady  parlor-window  behind  the  lilacs," 
cool  and  easy,  hemming  muslin  cap-strings,  or  reading  the 
last  new  book.  She  who  hath  faculty  is  never  in  a  hurry, 
never  behind-hand. 

In  the  same  spirit  here  is  Mrs.  Katy's  gospel, 
wherein  she  declares 

Never  say  there  isn't  time  for  a  thing  that  ought  to  be 
done.  If  a  thing  is  necessary,  why,  life  is  long  enough  to 
find  a  place  for  it.  That's  my  doctrine.  When  anybody 
tells  me  they  can't  find  time  for  this  or  that,  I  don't  think 
much  of  'em. 

In  this  admirable  novel,  which  gives  an  insight 
into  the  theology  of  the  day,  portrays  an  old-stylo 
divine,  and,  in  sharp  contrast,  the  brilliant  Aaron 
Burr,  we  have  along  the  thread  of  the  story  the 

warmest,  most  inviting  atmosphere  of  neighborly 

» 
life,  the  quilting  and  gentle  gossiping,  the  parties 


HARRIET   BEECHER   STOWE.  Ill 

in  the  parlor  and  cooking  in  the  kitchen.  It  is  to 
this  book  that  we  owe  the  big-hearted,  black  ser 
vant  (slave  indeed),  Candace,  "Queen  of  Ethi 
opia,"  who,  when  she  had  her  freedom  given  her. 
wanted  the.ni  all  to  understand 

"  dat  it's  my  will  an'  pleasure  to  go  right  on  doin'  my  work 
jes'  de  same :  an*  missis,  please,  I'll  allers  put  three  eggs 
in  de  crullers  now ;  an'  I  won't  turn  de  wash-basin  down  in 
de  sink,  but  hang  it  jam-up  on  de  nail ;  an'  I  won't  pick  up 
chips  in  a  milk-pan,  if  I'm  in  ever  so  big  a  hurry." 

And  to  TJie  Minister's  Wooing  we  owe,  too,  the 
little,  dapper,  old-maid  dressmaker,  Miss  Prissy 
Dhnond,  as  nimble  with  her  tongue  as  with  her 
fingers,  who  had  such  professional  pride  in  being 
able  to  get  a  wonderful  dress  out  of  a  small  pat 
tern  of  silk  ;  reaching  the  climax  of  skill  in  mak 
ing  over  a  gown  spoiled  by  another  of  the  craft, 
and  not  a  scrap  of  the  goods  left  to  do  with,  so 
that  she  had  to  piece  "  one  of  the  sleeves  twenty- 
nine  times,  and  yet  nobody  would  ever  have  known 
that  there  was  a  joining  in  it." 

The  Pearl  of  Orr's  Island,  like  the  above,  has 
one  of  the  delicate  heroines  who  represents  the 


112      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

ideal  New  England  maiden,  an  apple-blossom  of 
a  girl,  dainty  as  the  sweet-brier  rose,  like  the 
May-flower  whose  tints  are  on  her  cheek ;  another 
of  the  clergy,  whom  Mrs.  Stowe  delights  to  por 
tray,  for  she  knew  his  kind  from  her  childhood ; 
and  two  more  of  the  typical,  good  old  maids  — 
we  shall  come  upon  the  hard  and  cruel  one  in 
Miss  Asphyxia  in  Oldtown  Folks  —  aunt  Ruey 
and  her  sister,  aunt  Roxy,  who  is  introduced  as 
presiding  over  the  steeping  of  catnip  tea  in  a 
snub-nosed  tea-pot  on  the  hearth,  at  the  same 
time  patting  with  a  gentle  tattoo  on  the  back  of  a 
baby  she  was  trotting  on  her  knee.  It  is  a  pa 
thetic  story  of  the  Maine  coast,  but  brightened  up 
by  the  "  yarns  "  of  the  old  sea-captain  whose  vivid 
imagination  run  away  with  him,  and  sprinkled 
with  those  bits  of  wisdom  which  remind  us  of  the 
author's  English  cotemporary,  George  Eliot ;  like 
aunt  Roxy's  remark  about  the  bringing  up  chil 
dren  : 

"  All  children  ain't  alike,  Mis'  Kittridge.  .  .  .  This 
'un  ain't  like  your  Sally.  A  hen  and  a  bumble-bee  can't  be 
fetched  up  alike,  fix  it  how  you  will." 


HARRIET   BEECHER   STOWE.  1 13 

Or,  in  another  story  : 

A  satin  vest  and  a  nutmeg-grater  are  both  perfectly  harm 
less,  and  even  worthy  existences,  but  their  close  proximity 
on  a  jolting  journey  is  not  to  be  recommended. 

It  is  in  Oldtown  Folks  that  we  have  some  of  her 
boldest  strokes,  masterly  delineations  of  charac 
ter.  Sam  Lawson  goes  into  the  picture-gallery  of 
ne'er-do-wells  in  fiction  to  which  Walter  Scott  fur 
nished  so  many  subjects.  See  what  a  favorite  he 
is  with  her : 

Work,  thrift,  and  industry  are  such  an  incessant  steam- 
power  in  Yankee  life,  that  society  would  burn  itself  out 
with  intense  friction  were  there  not  interposed  here  and 
there  the  lubricating  power  of  a  decided  do-nothing  —  a 
man  who  won't  be  hurried,  and  won't  work,  and  will  take 
his  ease  in  his  own  way,  in  spite  of  the  whole  protest  of  his 
neighborhood  to  the  contrary. 

Sam  Lawson  and  his  fireside  stories,  the  boys 
know,  or  ought  to  know.  One  wonders  what 
Hawthorne  would  have  done  with  such  a  person 
age,  or  with  aunt  Lois,  or  any  of  the  inconsistent 
very  faultily  human  beings  Mrs.  Stowe  handles  so 


114      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

easily.  There  is  this  difference  between  the  two 
authors  :  she  took  people  as  she  found  them,  and 
made  us  see  them,  natural  beings  whom  we  recog 
nize  as  such  ;  while  he  furnished  individuals  from 
his  own  brain  to  be  used  in  carrying  out  certain 
purposes  he  had  in  mind. 

If  one  were  to  select  from  her  books  the  juciest 
one,  the  one  warmest  with  pulsing  life-blood,  rich 
est  in  experience,  lighted  up  with  finest  humor, 
at  once  homely  and  romantic,  which  but  Oldtown 
Folks  should  it  be  ? 

Oh !  that  kitchen  of  the  olden  times,  the  old,  clean,  roomy 
New  England  kitchen! — who  that  has  breakfasted,  dined 
and  supped  in  one  has  not  cheery  visions  of  its  thrift,  its 
warmth,  its  welcome  ? 

She  seems  to  have  revelled  in  that  culinary 
region  redolent  of  savory  odors,  and  besides  giv 
ing  a  rapturous  but  not  over-done  chapter  to  its 
praise  in  The  Ministers  Wooing,  and  reverted  to 
it  lovingly  and  lingeringly  again  and  again  in 
other  stories,  she  has  delectable,  tempting  chap 
ters  where  she  tells  of  the  Oldtown  days.  For 
three  that  are  incomparable  in  what  they  reveal 


HARRIET  BEECH'ER  STOWE.  115 

to  us  of  a  kind  of  life  that  will  never  be  seen 
again,  read  VI.,  XXII.  and  XXVIL,  and  bear  in 
mind  that  there  is  a  deal  of  family  history  therein. 
If  you  should  read  the  biography  of  Lyman  Beecher 
you  would  identify  scenes,  occurrences  and  indi 
viduals.  Harriet  Beecher  as  a  child  was  one  of  a 
family  where  there  were  sometimes  thirteen,  be 
sides  visitors,  so  that  the  old  carry-all  was  forever 
on  the  go :  there  were  aunts  and  children,  faith 
ful  domestics,  brewings  and  bakings,  great  festival 
days  of  cooking  election  cake  and  Thanksgiving 
good  things,  roaring  fires  in  the  wide  chimney 
and  big  woodpiles  without.  You  must  not  fail  to 
associate  her  with  that  warm,  generous,  genial 
family  life ;  with  the  "  Firelight  Talks  in  my 
grandmother's  kitchen,"  and  the  "  Daily  living  in 
Oldtown." 

Now  come  we  to  the  practical  papers.  Com- 
monsense  is  a  great  gift,  and  Mrs.  Stowe  possesses 
it.  When  we  read  her  House  and  Home  Talks  and 
The  Chimney  Corner,  which  includes  Little  Foxes, 
we  shall  appreciate  it,  and  wish  the  gift  was  a 
more  universal  one.  Meanwhile,  let  us  avail  our- 


Il6     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

selves  of  her  practical  way  of  seeing  things  and 
put  it  to  personal  use.  If  there  was  only  space 
to  quote  liberally  from  the  store-house  which  she, 
under  the  name  of  Christopher  Crowfield  wrote ! 
—  about  dress,  cooking,  economy,  home-making, 
housekeeping  ;  wise,  helpful  words  for  everybody, 
the  outcome  of  her  own  experience  and  keen  way 
of  looking  on  at  the  modes  and  manners  of  others  ; 
words  which  are  of  use  for  every-day  living,  for 
nobody  knew  better  than  she  that  it  is  our  com 
mon  life  we  need  to  make  the  most  account  of  — 
company  days  can  take  care  of  themselves.  The 
rambling  papers  with  the  above  general  titles 
cover  the  whole  ground  of  which  they  treat,  and 
family  life,  the  home  life  of  brothers  and  sisters 
and  their  elders,  would  be  much  sweeter,  more 
delicate,  refined,  genial,  and  what  home  should 
be,  if  these  things  could  be  laid  to  heart. 

Read  what  she  says  about  "  the  economy  of 
beauty,"  and  see  how  all  things  that  a  woman  of 
a  certain  style  touches,  will  "fall  at  once  into  har 
mony  and  proportion."  Read  that  admirable 
picture  of  a  "  New  England  saint,"  who  was  her 


HARRIET    BEECHER   STOWE.  117 

own  aunt  Esther.  Read  that  tempting  description 
of  her  library,  her  chimney  corner,  around  which 
the  others  had  pitched  their  winter  tents,  while 
"  Rover  makes  a  hearth-rug  of  himself  in  winking 
satisfaction  in  front  of  my  fire." 

Of  all  the  papers,  perhaps  the  most  helpful  are 
the  "  Little  Foxes,"  worthy  of  earnest  heed,  "  by 
which,"  she  says,  "  I  mean  those  unsuspected, 
unwatched,  insignificant,  little  causes  that  nibble 
away  domestic  happiness ; "  and  she  numbers 
"  the  pet  foxes  of  good  people  "  as  seven :  "  Fault 
finding,  Intolerance,  Reticence,  Irritability,  Exaot- 
ingness,  Discourtesy,  Self-will ;  "  while  fretfulness 
and  grumbling  come  in  as  specific  ones. 

Here  are  some  of  her  words  : 

How  much  more  we  might  make  of  our  family  life,  of 
our  friendships,  if  every  secret  thought  of  love  blossomed 
into  a  deed.  .  .  .  We  can  make  ourselves  say  the  kind 
things  that  rise  in  our  hearts  and  tremble  on  our  lips,  —  do 
the  gentle  and  helpful  deeds  which  we  long  to  do  and 
shrink  back  from  ;  and  little  by  little  it  will  grow  easier  . 

.  .  till  the  hearts  in  the  family  circle,  instead  of  being 
so  many  frozen  islands,  shall  be  full  of  warm  airs  and  echo 
ing  bird-voices  answering  back  and  forth  with  a  constant 


Il8     PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

melody  of  love.  .  .  .  I  do  not  think  that  it  makes  family 
life  more  sincere,  or  any  more  honest,  to  have  the  members 
of  a  domestic  circle  feel  a  freedom  to  blurt  out  in  each 
other's  faces,  without  thought  or  care,  all  the  disagreeable 
things  that  occur  to  them,  as,  for  example,  "  How  horridly 
you  look  this  morning  1  "  .  .  "  What  makes  you  wear 
such  a  dreadfully  unbecoming  dress  ? "  etc. 

You  will  find  a  great  deal  in  her  writings  of 
insistence  upon  the  powers  and  gifts  of  even  the 
most  ordinary  women  and  girls  to  make  life  cheer 
ful,  and  praise  of  that  "  art  of  arts,"  appointing 
a  household  rightly  and  making  the  wheels  run 
smoothly,  which  belongs  to  the  "  sisters  of  the 
most  holy  and  blessed  order  of  the  fireside." 

She  also  gives  much  advice  about  writing,  and 
tells  (in  papers  in  "  Hearth  and  Home  ")  how 
she  began  at  about  ten  or  twelve  years  to  try  her 
hand  at  composition,  how  she  helped  her  style  by 
reading  Ivanhoe^  which  she  read  through  seven 
times  within  six  months,  till  she  knew  most  of  it 
by  heart.  There  were  none  but  grown  people's 
books  in  her  family,  but  she  says  of  herself  — 
using  the  editorial  "  we  : " 


HARRIET    BEECHER   STOWE.  Iig 

We  read  a  few  things  a  great  many  times  over  —  read 
and  thought  and  re-read,  until  the  words  and  the  sentences 
were  fixed  in  our  minds,  .  .  .  and  in  that  slow  way  we 
\vere  twenty  years  in  learning  to  write  —  older  than  that  be 
fore  we  ever  thought  of  having  a  piece  in  print ;  and  for 
years  our  first  pieces  were  always  given  away ;  .  .  and 
we  found  it  pleasant  to  learn  so,  because  we  liked  writing, 
even  when  we  did  not  write  well,  and  we  loved  study  and 
reading  and  thinking  for  themselves,  and  without  a  dream 
of  any  use  we  might  make  of  them  or  what  other  people 
might  think  of  us. 

That  is  the  way  the  foremost  woman-writer  of 
America,  with  gifts  "  of  the  Walter  Scott  pattern," 
began  her  literary  work.  It  was  in  the  parsonage 
at  Litchfield,  Connecticut,  that  the  girl,  Harriet 
Elizabeth  Beecher,  was  born,  June  14,  1811  ;  the 
seventh  child,  so  you  may  be  sure  she  was  in  no 
danger  of  too  much  coddling  and  petting.  Part 
of  her  education  she  obtained  running  wild  on 
the  long,  breezy  hill  of  Litchfield ;  and  at  home, 
though  teachable  and  docile,  she  must  have  been, 
as  Rose  Terry  Cook  says,  "  a  very  little  pickle  " 
of  a  girl,  for  one  of  her  mischievous  acts  was  to 
beguile  her  brothers  and  sisters  "  to  eat  up  a  bag 


120     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

of  rare  tulip-roots  under  the  impression  that  they 
were  onions  and  very  nice." 

They  were  wide-awake,  bright,  healthful,  happy 
children  in  that  family,  in  the  whole  numbering 
twelve,  of  whom  eight  became  authors.  She 
probably  meant  her  own  big  and  miscellaneous 
household  where  she  says  in  Oldtown  Folks  "we 
were  a  sharp-cut  and  peculiar  set  in  our  house," 
and  she  surely  means  the  comradeship  of  her 
childhood  in  the  chapter  where,  "  we  begin  to  be 
grown-up  people,"  and  she  speaks  of  the  influences 
"  all  homely,  innocent  and  pure." 

At  fifteen  she  was  associated  with  her  talented 
sister,  Catherine,  in  a  girls'  seminary  at  Hartford, 
at  twenty-one  she  became  the  wife  of  Professor 
Stowe,  at  forty-one  she  wrote  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin 
(her  first  printed  work  of  much  importance),  and 
almost  at  once  took  the  place  she  now  occupies  in 
literature,  for,  however  admirable  some  of  her 
later  books,  that  was  the  one  that  made  her 
famous. 

Her  winter  home,  as  you  are  aware,  is  in  Man 
darin,  Florida ;  her  other  is  in  Hartford.  In  an 


HARRIET    BEECHER    STOWE.  121 

earlier  number  of  Harper's  Monthly  it  is  briefly  de 
scribed  —  a  slate-colored  cottage,  modestly  fitted 
up,  where,  "  a  very  quiet  little  lady,  plainly  attired," 
the  writer  of  that  article  found  her,  appearing 
"  the  wife,  the  mother,  the  grandmother,  living  in 
her  domestic  interests,  rather  than  the  woman 
distinguished  in  national  history  and  literature." 
Long  may  it  be  before  she  passes  on  to  join 
the  great  company  of  immortals  on  the  other 
side! 

NOTE.  —  A  list  of  Mrs.  Stowe's  prose  writings:  Uncle 
Tom's  Cabin  (which  has  been  translated  into  nineteen  dif 
ferent  tongues),  Nina  Gordon  (  or  Dred},  Agnes  of  Sorrento, 
The  Pearl  of  Orr's  Island,  The  Minister's  Wooing,  Oldtown 
Folks,  Sam  Lawson's  Oldtown  Fireside  Stories,  My  Wife  and 
I,  We  and  our  Neighbors,  The  Mayflower  and  other  Sketches, 
Poganuc  People,  House  and  Home  Papers,  The  Chimney  Cor 
ner,  Little  Foxes,  Little  Pussy  Willow,  A  Dog's  Mission, 
Queer  little  People,  Palmetto  Leaves  (Florida  Sketches), 
Men  of  our  Times  (being  brief  biographies  of  eighteen  per 
sons  whom  she  calls  "  specimen  citizens,"  to  teach  how  a 
Christian  republic  trains  her  sons,  and  how  out  of  our  so 
ciety  grow  such  men  as  Lincoln,  Grant,  Greeley,  Farragut 
and  others). 


ALICE  GARY. 


PHCEBE  GARY. 


VII. 

ALICE   AND   PHOEBE   GARY. 

SEVERAL  years  ago  —  perhaps  fifteen  —  Whit- 
tier  published  a  sweet  and  tender  poem, 
called  "  The  Singer,"  beginning : 

Years  since  (but  names  to  me  before), 
Two  sisters  sought  at  eve  my  door; 
Two  song-birds  wandering  from  their  nest, 
A  gray  old  farm-house  in  the  West 

Very  likely  you  have  it  in  your  scrap-book,  and 
may  have  wondered  whom  he  meant.  The  two 
were  Alice  and  Phoebe  Gary,  then  on  a  sort  of 
pilgrimage  from  their  home  in. Ohio,  to  see  face  to 
face  their  literary  friends  in  New  York,  and  they 
kept  on  to  Amesbury  to  pay  the  homage  of  admir 
ing  hearts  to  the  Quaker  poet  who  had  written  in 
kindly  terms  of  their  verse.  That  was  in  1850; 
125 


126      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

Alice  was  then  thirty,  her  sister  twenty-six.  Alice 
was  the  one  whom  he  commemorated  as  the 
"  singer  "  (though  both  were  poets)  in  these  lines, 
which  were  not  written  till  twenty  years  after  the 
visit,  when  he  heard  of  her  death. 

There  is  to  me  something  almost  as  pathetic 
about  the  early  history  of  these  girls  as  there  is 
about  that  of  the  Bronte"  sisters,  though  the  fami 
lies  were  wholly  unlike  ;  the  Carys  were  loving  and 
confiding,  whereas  the  Brontes  while  having  deep 
feelings,  were  held  from  manifestations  of  tender 
ness  by  a  kind  of  unnatural  repression  that  seemed 
hard,  and  at  times  almost  cruel.  In  both  households 
there  were  many  deaths,  and  sorrowful  fortunes  ; 
in  both,  the  children  were  excessively  fond  of  out- 
of-door  life,  and  of  simple  pleasures ;  they  dreamed 
dreams,  and,  shut  in  upon  themselves,  cherished 
aspirations  which  they  shyly  put  into  verse,  and  se 
cretly  sent  forth  into  the  world,  of  which  they  knew 
almost  nothing,  but  which  soon  began  to  know 
them,  and  to  wonder  where  these  singing-birds 
were  hidden  away.  Wonderful  children  in  both 
cases,  with  heart-hunger  and  heart-break  in  their 


ALICE   AND    PHCEBE   GARY.  127 

portion,  and  wistful  longings  that  could  not  be  sat 
isfied  with  all  the  literary  success  that  came  to  them. 

To  know  just  what  privations  and  bereavements 
Alice  and  Phoebe  experienced,  you  must  read  the 
pathetic  Memorial,  written  by  their  dear  friend 
Mary  Clemmer,  who  has  just  passed  out  of  life  her 
self,  and  her  own  biography  now  adds  one  more  to 
the  fast-increasing  list  on  the  rolls  of  the  dead 
whose  names  we  know  and  honor. 

She  tells  how  their  father  and  mother  began  their 
married  life  in  a  new  settlement  in  Ohio,  on  the 
very  land  where  is  the  Clovernook  of  Alice's  stories ; 
there  they  spent  eighteen  years  of  hard  toil,  and 
nine  children  were  born  ;  Alice  was  the  fourth, 
born  on  the  place  called  Mount  Healthy  (near 
Cincinnati)  April  26,  1820  ;  Phoebe,  the  sixth,  was 
born  at  Clovernook,  September  24,  1824.  Two 
darling  sisters  out  of  the  band,  Rhoda  and  Lucy, 
died  in  one  year,  and  that  was  one  cause  of  so 
much  of  the  sadness  in  Alice  Gary's  writings.  It 
was  a  loss  and  a  wrench  which  she  never  could  get 
over  to  the  last  day  of  her  life.  She  was  sensitive, 
and  all  such  wounds  cut  deep,  and  never  healed. 


128     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

Neither  could  she  ever  wholly  overcome  the  influ 
ence  of  the  hardships  of  her  early  life  ;  for  even, 
towards  the  close,  when  she  had  everything  she 
wanted,  she  said  : 

The  first  fourteen  years  of  my  life  it  seemed  as  if  there  was 
actually  nothing  in  existence  but  work.  The  whole  family 
struggle  was  just  for  the  right  to  live  free  from  the  curse  of 
debt.  My  father  worked  early  and  late  ;  my  mother's  work 
was  never  done.  The  mother  of  nine  children,  with  no  other 
help  than  that  of  their  little  hands,  I  shall  always  feel  that 
she  was  taxed  beyond  her  strength  and  died  before  her  time. 
.  .  .  Rhoda  and  I  pined  for  beauty  ;  but  there  was  no 
beauty  about  our  homely  house,  but  that  which  Nature  gave 
us.  We  hungered  and  thirsted  for  knowledge;  but  there 
were  not  a  dozen  books  on  our  family  shelf,  not  a  library 
within  our  reach.  There  was  little  time  to  study,  and  had 
there  been  more,  there  was  no  chance  to  learn  but  in  the 
district  school-house  down  the  road.  I  never  went  to  any 
other  —  not  much  to  that. 

It  is  marvellous  the  use  these  two  made  of  their 
lives  under  their  depressing  circumstances.  After 
a  step-mother  came  to  direct  the  ways  of  the  house, 
she  grudged  candles  for  them  to  read  by  when 
their  day's  work  was  done ;  but  the  aspiring  girls, 


ALICE  AND    PHCEBE  GARY.  129 

who,  unknown  to  each  other,  had  already  begun  to 
put  on  paper  the  songs  that  sung  themselves  in 
their  hearts,  substituted  a  saucer  of  lard  with  a  rag 
in  it,  and  by  that  light  studied  and  wrote.  Phoebe's 
first  poem  was  published  when  she  was  only  four 
teen;  and  talking  about  it  with  a  friend,  not  long 
before  her  death,  and  of  her  rapture  when  the 
newspaper  came  and  her  eyes  beheld  in  print 
the  verses  she  had  written,  she  said :  "  O,  if  they 
could  only  look  like  that  now,  it  would  be  better 
than  money ! "  She  said  she  laughed  and  she 
cried : 

I  did  not  care  any  more  if  I  was  poor,  or  my  clothes  plain. 
Somebody  cared  enough  for  my  verses  to  print  them,  and  I 
was  happy.  I  looked  with  compassion  on  my  schoolmates. 
You  may  know  more  than  I  do,  I  thought,  but  you  can't 
write  verses  that  are  printed  in  a  newspaper. 

Alice's  first  appearance  was  when  she  was  sev 
enteen,  and  she  wrote  only  poetry  until  1847, wnen 
she  began  a  series  of  prose  articles  in  the  National 
Era,  signed  "  Patty  Lee."  In  a  few  years  she  be 
came  well  and  widely  known  by  her  papers  on  rural 
life,  which  are  now  in  books  with  the  titles  Clover- 


130     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

nook  (three  series)  and  Pictures  of  Country  Life. 
There  is  but  one  fault  to  be  found  with  them,  and 
that  is  the  under-tone  of  sadness,  before  referred 
to,  and  which  pervades  many  of  her  poems ;  but 
that  we  can  forget,  in  the  fond  and  faithful  por 
traiture  of  scenes  and  characters  she  had  known  so 
well.  In  "  My  Grandfather  "  are  some  of  her  best 
reminiscences,  of  the  days  when  she  was  a  child 
stringing  a  wreath  of  sweet-brier  berries  which  she 
called  coral;  there  is  the  walk  to  the  old  mill, 
along  the  turnpike,  then  into  a  grass-grown  road : 

A  narrow  lane  bordered  on  each  side  by  old  and  decaying 
cherry-trees  led  us  to  the  house,  ancient-fashioned,  with  high, 
steep  gables,  narrow  windows,  and  low,  heavy  chimneys,  of 
stone.  In  the  rear  was  an  old  mill,  with  a  plank  sloping 
from  the  door-sill  to  the  ground,  by  way  of  step,  and  a  square, 
open  window  in  the  gable,  through  which,  with  ropes  and 
pulleys  the  grain  was  drawn  up.  .  .  In  truth  it  was  a  lone 
some  sort  of  place,  with  dark  lofts  and  curious  binns,  and 
ladders  leading  from  place  to  place ;  and  there  were  cats 
creeping  stealthily  along  the  beams  in  wait  for  mice  and 
swallows,  if  as  sometimes  happened,  the  dry  nest  should  be 
loosened  from  the  rafter,  and  the  whole  tumble  ruinously 
down. 


ALICE   AND   PHOEBE   GARY.  131 

The  mill  was  a  favorite  theme  with  both  sisters ; 
Phoebe  (who  did  not  write  much  in  prose)  has  de 
lightful  verses  in  the  ballad  of  "Dovecote  Mill," 
where  she  lets  you  see  her  heart,  and  tells  you  all 
her  country  love,  and  shows  how  dear  was  "  the 
old  mill  rusty-red  "  with  its  moss-grown  roof : 

Through  a  loop-hole  made  in  the  gable  high, 

In  and  out  like  arrows  fly 

The  slender  swallows  swift  and  shy. 

And  with  bosoms  purple,  brown,  and  white, 
Along  the  eaves  in  the  shimmering  light, 
Sits  a  row  of  doves  from  morn  till  night 

And  there  is  a  great  deal  here,  as  in  other  poems, 
about  the  children,  and  where  they  played  —  real 
children,  who  seem  to  come  out  of  the  past  and 
be  living  before  you,  as  you  read : 

They  watched  the  mice  through  the  corn  sacks  steal, 
The  steady  shower  of  the  snowy  meal, 
And  the  water  falling  over  the  wheel. 

Homely  scenes,  of  simple,  rustic  life,  told  in  unpre 
tending  measure  —  but  to  those  of  us  who  love 
country  ways,  how  sweet  they  are ! 


132     PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

One  of  Alice's  most  entertaining  sketches  is  that 
of  Mrs.  Joseph  Dale  in  her  "goose-room."  No 
such  picture  could  be  made  now,  for  no  such  cus 
tom,  after  just  that  pattern,  can  exist.  Mrs.  Dale, 
adhering  to  the  primitive  way,  was  engaged  in  her 
yearly  picking  of  seventeen  geese,  though  she  was 
rich  and  could  afford  to  hire  some  one  else  to  do 
it,  and  though  she  had  no  need  of  the  feathers,  for 
says  the  story : 

Her  down  beds  were  stuffed  already  to  hardness  with 
feathers,  but  that  mattered  not.  She  would  have  thought 
as  soon  of  dispensing  with  her  extra  fine  blue  and  red  woolen 
coverlids  with  which  all  the  chamber  closets  were  heaped 
and  which  were  only  taken  down  about  the  tenth  of  July  to 
garnish  the  garden  fence  and  to  receive  the  benefit  of  sun 
and  air,  as  with  the  seventeen  geese  and  two  or  three  ducks. 
But  passing  these  peculiarities,  herself  and  the  man-servant 
and  the  maid-servant  with  the  larger  children  more  or  less, 
had  succeeded,  after  many  crosses  and  drivings  hither  and 
thither,  in  lodging  the  gobblers  in  the  vacant  room  of  an  out 
building,  denominated  by  common  usage  the  goose-room. 

And  there,  this  notable  housewife,  with  a  white 
muslin  close  cap  on,  and  clad  in  an  old-fashioned 
gown  "  used  by  her  mother  before  her  for  a  similar 


ALICE    AND    PHCEBE   GARY.  133 

purpose,"  gave  herself  up  to  the  stuffy,  smothering 
work,  emerging  with  a  fringe  of  down  on  her  eye 
brows  and  around  the  edge  of  her  hair. 

You  feel  that  all  these  things  took  place  pre 
cisely  as  they  are  told ;  and  that  Mrs.  Dale,  and 
Mrs.  Hill,  and  Mrs.  Troost,  and  the  Templetons, 
and  the  Wetherbees,  the  various  uncles  and  aunts 
and  deacons  were  her  own  old  neighbors. 

You  know  that  the  unfrequented  road  "traversed 
mostly  by  persons  going  to  mill  "  actually  existed. 
You  see  the  horses  in  the  door-yard,  the  turkeys, 
and  that  surly-looking  little  red  cow  with  a  white 
line  down  her  back  standing  near  a  trough  of  water 
in  the  lane.  Little  "  bits,"  like  still-life  pictures, 
are  they.  After  all  these  years,  and  the  sisters  so 
long  in  their  graves,  you  can  see,  through  the  words 
of  Alice,  what  they  saw  —  their  own  humble  home, 
and  other  homes ;  the  old-fashioned  dressers  with 
the  polished  platters,  and  blue  or  red  crockery ; 
the  sanded  floors,  the  floors  scoured  white  with  a 
strip  of  home-made  carpet  before  the  blue  stone 
hearth  of  the  fire-place,  which  was  filled  with  green 
boughs  in  summer,  and  in  winter  glowed  with  a 


134      PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

blazing  wood-fire ;  you  can  see  the  very  room  with 
its  desk  and  table  and  few,  plain  chairs  where  the 
grandmother  sat  in  her  bereavement,  with  the 
black  ribbon  tied  over  her  cap. 

You  know  about  the  farm-work,  the  chopping,  the 
smoke-house,  the  sugar-camp.  In  that  graceful 
ballad,  spoken  of  above,  the  sugar-making  is  told 
deliciously : 

Ah  !  then  there  was  life  and  fun  enough, 

In  making  the  "  spile  "  and  setting  the  trough, 

And  all,  till  the  time  of  stirring  off. 

They  followed  the  sturdy  hired  man, 
V/ith  his  brawny  arms  and  face  of  tan, 
Who  gathered  the  sap  each  day  as  it  ran. 

Both  Alice  and  Phrebe  delighted  in  these  memo 
ries,  half  pensive  though  the  atmosphere  was 
through  which  they  looked  back.  They  could 
never  say  enough  about  the  gray  old  homestead, 
the  "  old  house  with  windows  to  the  morn  ;  "  and 
there  are  always  fruit-trees,  cherries,  and 

The  old,  familiar  quince  and  apple-trees, 
Chafing  against  the  wall  with  every  breeze, 


ALICE   AND    PHCEBE   GARY.  135 

and  there  are  always  old-fashioned  flowers,  lilies 
down  the  path,  and  "prince's  feather  at  the  garden 
gate,"  and 

.    .    the  candytuft  and  the  columbine 
And  lady-grass  like  a  ribbon  fine, 

lilacs,  and  dearest  of  all  to  both,  the  sweet-brier. 
Phcebe  writes : 

And  the  lilac  flings  her  perfume  wide, 
And  the  sweet-brier  up  to  the  lattice  tied, 
Seems  trying  to  push  herself  inside. 

Alice  writes  : 

I  search  and  find  the  flower  that  used  to  grow 
Close  by  the  door-stone  of  the  dear,  old  home. 

We  come  to  love  our  simple  four-leaved  rose, 

As  if  she  were  a  sister  or  a  friend, 
And  if  my  eyes  all  flowers  but  one  should  lose, 
Our  wild  sweet-brier  would  be  the  one  to  choose. 

The  love  of  the  Clovernook  days  grew  upon 
them,  and  some  of  the  later  poems,  written  in  their 
city  home,  show  how  each  was  living  them  over,  and 
it  is  noticeable  what  a  similarity  there  is  in  their 
themes  and  also  in  their  modes  of  treatment.  In 


136     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

her  poem  "  The  Sight  of  Days  gone  by,"  where  she 
calls  up  the  new  furrows,  the  hedges,  the  barn,  and 
the  well 

.    .    that  we  used  to  think  ran  through 
To  the  other  side  of  the  world, 

Alice  has : 

I  thought  of  the  old  barn  set  about 

With  its  stacks  of  sweet,  dry  hay ; 
Of  the  swallows  flying  in  and  out 

Through  the  gables  steep  and  gray. 

While  Phoebe  in  one  of  her  poems  has  : 

The  barn  with  crowded  mows  of  hay 
And  roof  upheld  by  golden  sheaves ; 

Its  rows  of  doves  at  close  of  day 
Cooing  together  on  the  eaves. 

Both  wrote  a  great  deal  of  poetry,  and  some  of 
their  best  pieces  are  to  be  found  in  school-books, 
in  collections  and  selections,  re-appearing  in  news 
papers  from  time  to  time,  and  always  favorites. 
No  danger  but  the  memory  of  Alice  and  Phoebe 
Gary  will  be  kept  green,  for  poems  from  their 
hearts  go  straight  to  the  deep  places  where  love 


ALICE   AND    PHCEBE    GARY.  137 

and  tenderness  abide  in  other  hearts.  Phoebe  had 
a  more  joyous  temperament  than  Alice,  and  saw 
life  through  a  more  cheerful  atmosphere,  and  in 
her  home  she  was  always  brimming  over  with  mer 
riment  and  fun. 

That  they  should  have  gone  to  New  York  city  to 
live,  and  there  have  become  such  a  centre  of  attrac 
tion  that  cultivated  men  and  women,  the  choicest, 
should  have  delighted  to  gather  about  them,  seems 
like  romance.  It  was  Alice,  broken  in  health  and 
poor,  but  brave  and  resolute,  who  started  off  to 
seek  her  fortune,  believing  that  New  York  would 
prove  a  good  place  for  literary  work ;  and  in  a 
short  time  she  sent  for  Phoebe  and  a  younger  sis 
ter,  Elmina,  to  join  her ;  and  there  they  made  a 
home,  writing  for  whatever  papers  would  pay  them, 
living  frugally,  and  keeping  out  of  debt.  After  a 
few  years  they  were  able  to  buy  a  house,  where  the 
two  elder  sisters  spent  the  remainder  of  their  lives, 
and  in  which  Alice  and  Elmina  died.  To  know 
how  prettily  and  with  what  taste  they  fitted  it  up, 
what  troops  of  friends  they  drew  to  it,  what  gra 
cious  hostesses  they  were,  and  how  beautiful  were 


138     PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

the  lives  of  the  Gary  sisters,  you  must  read  Mary 
Clemmer's  book.  Elmina  died  early ;  Alice  on  the 
twelfth  of  February,  1876  ;  worn  out  with  incessant 
writing  during  the  many  later  years  in  which  she 
did  not  give  herself  needed  recreation  in  the  coun 
try  atmosphere  she  was  born  in,  and  which  most 
probably  would  have  given  her  help  and  healing. 

Then,  it  appears  that  for  Phoebe,  who  had 
always  depended  upon  her,  "  the  very  impulse  and 
power  to  live  were  gone.  She  sank  and  died,  be 
cause  she  could  not  live  on,  in  a  world  where  her 
sister  was  not."  Her  death  took  place  at  Newport, 
Rhode  Island,  whither  her  friends  had  taken  her, 
on  July  31  of  the  same  year. 

One  of  the  last  things  she  had  read  to  her,  while 
lying  sick,  was  "  The  Singer,"  to  which  she  listened 
with  closed  eyes,  and  then  said,  "  It  was  all  I  could 
wish  or  ask  for." 


NOTE.  —  Alice  wrote  Clovernook  Papers  ( three  series  ), 
Pictures  of  Country  Life  ;  three  novels,  Hagar,  Married  not 
Mated,  and  the  Bishop's  Son  ;  several  volumes  of  poems ; 
and  two  collections  for  children,  Clovernook  Children,  and 
Snow  Berries.  Phoebe  had  two  volumes  of  poems,  and  aided 
in  editing  several  books.  The  record  of  their  lives  is  in  the 
Memorial  by  Mary  Clemmer,  who  also  edited  their  last 
poems. 


BAYARD    TAYLOR. 


VIII. 

BAYARD   TAYLOR. 

IT  was  the  unquenchable  ambition  of  Bayard 
Taylor  to  be  remembered  as  a  poet.  How  in 
tense  was  this  longing,  how  steadfastly  he  labored 
to  produce  poems  which  should  endure,  how  per 
sistent  was  his  determination  to  do  worthy  work  in 
this  line,  is  shown  in  scores  of  letters  to  his  inti 
mate  friends.  As  he  grew  older,  he  put  away 
from  him  the  idea  that  he  must  depend  at  all  on 
his  volumes  of  travel,  and  constantly  spoke  of  their 
popularity  as  something  that  could  not  last  long, 
even  becoming  half  disgusted  at  being  called  "  the 
great  American  traveller."  Only  a  few  years  before 
his  death  he  wrote  to  a  friend : 

"  The  other  day  I  looked  into  a  volume  of  my 
travels  published  in  1859.     Ye  gods !    what  a  flip 
pant  style !     I  assure  you  some  things  made  me 
141 


142       PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

wince,  with  a  feeling  almost  like  physical  pain." 
There  was  no  occasion  for  depreciating  himself 
in  this  way.  You  will  look  long  before  you  find 
his  superior  as  a  writer  of  books  of  travel  —  I  am 
half  ready  to  say  you  will  look  in  vain,  take  him  all 
in  all.  He  did  not  depend  on  guide-books  or  on  a 
mass  of  knowledge  acquired  in  preparation  for 
sight-seeing  and,  consequently,  his  letters  are  re 
markably  free  from  the  statistics,  traditionary  lore 
and  historic  matter  which  cumber  most  works  of 
the  kind  —  greatly  to  the  vexation  of  soul  of  the 
reader. 

He  was  an  easy  and  natural  writer,  and  did 
write  well,  notwithstanding  his  unmerciful  criti 
cisms  of  himself ;  he  had  the  fair  sense  of  propor 
tion  which  is  indispensable,  gave  variety,  and  did 
not  dwell  too  long  on  any  one  topic. 

More  important  than  all,  he  was  splendidly 
equipped  by  nature  and  temperament  to  be  a  trav 
eller.  He  was  strong  and  enduring,  with  ardor 
and  buoyancy  that  nothing  could  overcome ;  he 
had  great  joy  in  out-of-door  life,  and  had  a  craving 
that  would  not  be  put  aside  to  go  everywhere  and 


BAYARD   TAYLOR.  143 

see  everything.     The  spirit  of  adventure  was  born 
in  him.    Here  is  what  he  says  of  himself  as  a  child : 

In  looking  back  to  my  childhood,  I  can  recall  .  .  the 
intensest  desire  to  climb  upward  .  .  .  and  take  in  a  far 
wider  sweep  of  vision ;  .  .  I  remember  as  distinctly  as  if 
it  were  yesterday  the  first  time  this  passion  was  gratified. 
Looking  out  of  the  garret  window,  on  a  bright  May  morn 
ing,  I  discovered  a  row  of  slats  which  had  been  nailed  over 
the  shingles  for  the  convenience  of  the  carpenters  in  roofing 
the  house,  and  had  not  been  removed.  Here  was  at  last  a 
chance  to  reach  the  comb  of  the  steep  roof,  and  take  my 
first  look  abroad  into  the  world !  Not  without  some  trepi 
dation  I  ventured  out,  and  was  soon  seated  outside  of  the 
sharp  ridge.  Unknown  forests,  new  fields  and  houses,  ap 
peared  to  my  triumphant  view.  The  prospect,  though  it 
did  not  extend  more  than  four  miles  in  any  direction,  was 
boundless.  Away  in  the  northwest,  glimmering  through 
the  trees,  was  a  white  object,  probably  the  front  of  a  distant 
barn,  but  I  shouted  to  the  astonished  servant  girl  who  had 
just  discovered  me  from  the  garden  below,  "I  see  the  Falls 
of  Niagara ! " 

You  will  think  of  this  incident  and  of  the  child 
Bayard  in  his  Pennsylvania  home,  when  you  come 
to  some  passages  in  his  books,  where  he  stood  upon 


144     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

the  high  places  of  the  world  and  took  in  the  widest 
sweep  of  vision,  in  his  own  country,  in  Africa,  in 
Asia,  and  in  Northern  Europe. 

A  genuine,  healthy-natured  boy  he  was,  who 
went  fishing  by  torchlight,  gathered  lobelia  and 
sumach  to  provide  himself  with  pocket  money,  did 
chores  and  foddered  the  cattle  at  night  and  then 
sat  down  to  his  beloved  books  —  a  few  of  them  his 
own,  bought  with  money  he  earned  by  picking 
nuts  —  reading  everything  he  could  lay  his  hands 
on,  but  delighting  most  in  travels,  which  set  his 
imagination  wild,  as  his  own  have  kindled  many  a 
boy  since ;  and  he  had  presentiments  "  amounting 
to  positive  belief  "  that  he  should  one  day  visit  the 
cities  of  the  Old  World  that  he  read  of.  So  he 
made  ideal  journeys,  and  at  about  fifteen  he  learned 
French  and  Spanish,  which  came  into  use  a  few 
years  later.  He  tells  in  one  of  his  sketches  how 
when  he  was'in  Spain  (it  was  fourteen  years  after 
wards)  he  could  not  speak  the  language,  but  after 
desperate  efforts  to  recover  it : 

Like  Mrs.  Dombey  with  her  pain,  I  felt  as  if  there  were 
Spanish  words  somewhere  in  the  room,  but  I  could  not  pos- 


BAYARD   TAYLOR.  145 

itively  say  that  I  had  them.  .  .  I  had  taken  a  carriage 
for  Valldemosa,  after  a  long  talk  with  the  proprietor,  a  most 
agreeable  fellow,  when  I  suddenly  stopped,  and  exclaimed 
to  myself,  "You  are  talking  Spanish,  did  you  know  it?" 
It  was  even  so ;  as  much  of  the  language  as  I  ever  knew 
was  suddenly  and  unaccountably  restored  to  me. 

This  is  but  a  single  instance  of  the  remarkable 
way  he  had  all  his  life  of  packing  things  away  in 
his  mind,  which  he  was  always  sure  of  finding  when 
he  wanted  them. 

His  memory  was  prodigious,  and  he  would  store 
up  materials  for  future  use  on  some  poem  he  had 
planned  and  leave  them  till  the  right  time  came 
for  them  to  be  brought  forth. 

He  taught  school,  wrote  poetry,  learned  the 
printer's  trade,  and  at  nineteen  began  the  realiza 
tion  of  his  early  dreams  by  going  to  Europe,  having 
a  small  sum  of  money  advanced  for  letters  he  was 
to  write  home  for  publication.  It  was  a  wonderful 
thing  to  do,  and  so  his  countrymen  thought,  and 
when  after  two  years  he  came  back  he  found  him 
self  the  hero  of  the  hour.  His  first  book  of  prose 
appeared  in  1846  and  had  a  great  sale  —  Views 


146     PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

Afoot;  or,  Europe  seen  with  Knapsack  and  Staff. 
Three  years  later,  when  the  discovery  of  gold  in 
California  created  such  an  excitement  he  was  sent 
out  to  write  letters  for  the  New  York  Tribune;  and, 
notwithstanding  so  much  has  since  been  written 
concerning  that  period,  you  will  probably  nowhere 
else  find  so  accurate  a  portraiture  of  the  California 
of  '49,  and  life  in  the  gold  diggings  as  his,  taken 
freshly  on  the  spot,  when  everything  was  novel, 
and  a  phase  of  crude,  lawless,  struggling,  frantic 
life  was  seen  such  as  will  never  be  witnessed 
within  our  borders  again.  He  was  all  aglow  with 
his  subject,  and  those  letters  are  among  the  most 
spirited  he  ever  wrote.  He  minded  nothing  about 
discomforts  and  hindrances ;  even  over  the  dread 
ful  journey  across  the  Isthmus  which  was  a  terror 
to  emigrants,  he  says,  "  I  feel  fresh  enough  to  turn 
about  and  make  the  trip  over  again."  The  scenery 
of  California,  the  mountain  ranges,  the  deep  val 
leys,  the  magnificent  proportions  of  the  scattered 
trees,  delighted  his  eye  and  touched  his  poetic  im 
agination  ;  and  numerous  are  the  passages  express 
ive  of  his  enthusiasm,  like  this : 


BAYARD   TAYLOR.  147 

The  broad  oval  valleys,  shaded  by  magnificent  oaks,  and 
enclosed  by  the  lofty  mountains  of  the  Coast  Range,  open 
beyond  each  other  like  a  suite  of  palace  chambers,  each 
charming  more  than  the  last. 

He  spent  five  months  in  the  midst  of  that  rough, 
half-savage  life,  and  says : 

I  lived  almost  entirely  in  the  open  air,  sleeping  on  the 
ground,  with  my  saddle  for  a  pillow,  and  sharing  the  hard 
ships  of  the  gold-diggers,  without  taking  part  in  their  labors. 


In  a  private  letter,  he  writes  in  this  rapturous 
way: 

"  It  is  so  delicious  to  fall  asleep  with  the  stars 
above  you  —  to  feel  their  rays,  the  last  thing,  glim 
mering  in  your  hazy  consciousness.  .  .  one 
night  .  .  I  slept,  or  rather  watched,  all  alone 
on  the  top  of  a  mountain  with  vast  plains  glim 
mering  in  the  moonlight  below  me,  and  the  wolves 
howling  far  down  the  ravines.  Was  it  not  a  glo 
rious  night  ?  " 

This  record  of  travel  was  put  into  book  form  in 
1850,  under  the  leading  title  of  El  Dorado,  or  Ad 
ventures  in  the  Path  of  Empire. 


148     PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

His  next  long  journey  was  to  the  East,  whither 
he  set  his  face  in  1851 ;  and  there  he  went  to  what 
he  called  the  "farther  East,"  to  India,  where,  char 
acteristic  of  the  child  who  wished  to  climb  high 
and  see  off,  he  persisted,  though  he  had  scant  time, 
in  going  to  the  highest  point  in  the  Himalayas 
which  could  be  reached  in  the  winter  season ;  came 
home  after  two  years'  absence ;  and  three  books 
were  the  result :  A  Journey  to  Central  Africa,  1854, 
The  Lands  of  the  Saracens,  1854,  A  Visit  to  India, 
China  and  Japan,  1855. 

Just  as  before,  he  adapted  himself  to  circum 
stances  and  climate.  When  on  the  Nile,  he  says  : 

Every  day  opens  with  a.  jubilate,  and  closes  with  a  thanks 
giving.  If  such  a  balm  and  blessing  as  this  life  has  been  to 
me,  thus  far,  can  be  felt  twice  in  one's  existence,  there  must 
be  another  Nile  somewhere  in  the  world.  .  .  A  portion 
of  the  old  Egyptian  repose  seems  to  be  infused  in  our  na 
tures,  and  lately  when  I  saw  my  face  in  a  mirror,  I  thought  I 
saw  in  its  features  something  of  the  patience  and  resignation 
of  the  Sphinx. 

The  Southern  letters  are  rich  in  coloring  and 
steeped  in  sunshine,  but  for  spirit,  freshness  and 


BAYARD   TAYLOR.  149 

vigor  they  cannot  compare  with  those  from  the 
North  of  Europe,  where  he  went  in  1856,  publish 
ing  in  the  year  following  a  volume  called  Northern 
Travel:  Summer  and  Winter  Pictures  of  Sweden, 
Denmark  and  Lapland, 

I  wish  I  could  quote  liberally  from  his  account 
of  the  Thuringian  Forest,  and  tell  you  how  he  and 
his  friends  went  four  miles  deep  into  it  and  supped 
with  the  forester,  how  they  piled  on  the  logs  "  un 
til  the  flames  rose  high  and  red  and  snapped  in  the 
frosty  wind,"  and  one  of  the  forester's  men  "  went 
into  the  wood  for  green  fir-boughs,  which  crackled 
resinously  and  sent  up  clouds  of  brilliant  sparks," 
and  by  the  light  of  the  flashing,  sparkling,  fragrant 
firwood  they  ate  the  royal  meal  of  sausages  and 
potatoes  cooked  over  the  coals  there  in  the  open 
air.  It  is  like  Robin  Hood  and  his  merry  men  in 
the  greenwood. 

He  was  determined  to  see  the  Polar  day  with 
out  a  sun,  and  about  the  middle  of  January,  he 
started  from  Stockholm,  without  having  been  able 
to  find  a  man  who  had  ever  been  up  there  in  win 
ter,  or  one  who  could  tell  him  what  to  expect  or 


150     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

what  to  do.  Nothing  daunted  he  set  out  and  was 
gone  two  months,  during  which  he  travelled  "  nearly 
twenty-two  hundred  miles,  two  hundred  and  fifty  of 
them  by  reindeer,  and  nearly  five  hundred  within 
the  Arctic  Circle."  Away  up  at  Kantokeino  he  had 
his  heart's  desire,  and  saw  at  half-past  eleven  a  red 
light  almost  as  if  the  sun  was  coming  up,  but  a  few 
minutes  after  high  noon  it  began  to  fade,  and  he 
records  that  at  last,  once  in  his  life,  he  had  seen 
the  day  which  had  no  sun. 

He  made  such  close  acquaintance  with  the 
Aurora  Borealis  that  he  felt  he  was  almost  touched 
by  the  marvellous  presence ;  he  says  it  changed 

and  fell  in  a  broad  luminous  curtain  straight  downward 
through  the  air  until  its  fringed  hem  swung  apparently  but 
a  few  yards  over  our  heads.  This  phenomena  was  so  un 
expected  and  startling  that  for  a  moment  I  thought  our 
faces  would  be  touched  by  the  skirts  of  this  glorious  auroral 
drapery.  .  .  .  Anything  so  strange,  so  capricious,  so 
wonderful,  so  gloriously  beautiful,  I  scarcely  hope  to  see 
again. 

That  he  was  not  much  charmed  by  reindeer 
travel,  you  can  judge : 


BAYARD   TAYLOR.  151 

Nothing  can  exceed  the  coolness  with  which  your  deer 
jumps  off  the  track,  slackens  his  tow-rope,  turns  around  and 
looks  you  in  the  face,  as  much  as  to  say  "  what  are  you  go 
ing  to  do  about  it  ?"  .  .  This  is  particularly  pleasant  on. 
the  marshy  table-lands  of  Lapland,  where  if  he  takes  a  no 
tion  to  bolt  with  you,  your  pulkha  bounces  over  the  hard  tus 
socks,  sheers  sideways  down  the  sudden  pitches,  or  swamps 
itself  in  beds  of  loose  snow.  Harness  a  frisky  sturgeon  to 
a  "  dug-out "  in  a  rough  sea,  and  you  will  have  some  idea  of 
this  method  of  travelling.  While  I  acknowledge  the  Provi 
dential  disposition  of  things  which  has  given  the  reindeer  to 
the  Lapp,  I  cannot  avoid  thanking  Heaven  that  I  am  not  a 
Lapp,  and  that  I  shall  never  travel  again  with  reindeer. 

After  seeing  Lapps,  Finns  and  Northlanders  he 
was  glad  to  get  back  to  Germany  ;  and  after  the 
polar  twilight  it  rejoiced  his  eyes  to  see  a  blue  sky 
and  the  sun  riding  high  in  the  heavens,  "  like  a 
strong,  healthy  sun  again."  As  he  left  those  North 
ern  solitudes,  he  writes : 

Not  the  table-land  of  Pamir  in  Thibet,  the  cradle  of  the 
Oxus  and  the  Indus,  but  this  lower  Lapland  terrace  is  en 
titled  to  the  designation  of  the  "  Roof  of  the  World."  We 
were  on  the  summit,  creeping  along  the  mountain  rafters 
and  looking  southward  over  her  shelving  eaves.  .  .  Here 


152      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

for  once,  we  seemed  to  look  down  on  the  horizon,  and  I 
thought  of  Europe  and  the  Tropics  as  lying  below.  Our 
journey  north  had  been  an  ascent,  but  now  the  world's  steep 
sloped  downward  before  us  into  sunshine  and  warm  air. 

He  was  indeed  a  child  of  the  sun.  Many  a  pas 
sage  like  these  might  be  selected  from  his  letters 
or  diaries : 

I  feel  strongest  and  happiest  when  I  am  where  the  sun 
can  blaze  upon  me.  .  .  I  am  a  worshipper  of  the  sun. 
I  took  off  my  hat  to  him.  .  and  let  him  blaze  away  in 
my  face  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour.  .  .  The  Parsees  wor 
ship  the  sun,  as  the  greatest  visible  manifestation  of  the 
Deity ;  and  I  assure  you  I  have  felt  very  much  inclined  to 
do  the  same ,  when  he  and  I  were  alone  in  the  desert. 

He  was  sensitive,  "  thin  skinned,"  as  he  said,  and 
once  he  wrote  to  a  friend :  "  Don't  you  know  that 
slow  moaning  and  crying  of  the  wind,  as  if  some 
thing  ached  ?  When  it  sounds  that  way  I  can't 
work.  I  long  for  friends ;  I  think  of  the  blue 
Mediterranean ;  I  want  to  be  an  angel,  and  with 
the  angels  stand  —  or  something  else  to  keep  me 
from  sympathizing  with  all  out-of-doors." 

But  such  moods  were  rare.     He  was  one  of  the 


BAYARD   TAYLOR.  153 

most  tireless  of  workers,  never  willing  to  stop  to 
take  rest,  and  he  died  in  his  prime,  of  over-work. 
His  brain  was  always  full  of  plans,  which  he  carried 
along  till  the  time  came  to  give  them  shape,  and  he 
could  have  a  novel  and  a  long  poem  in  hand,  writ 
ing  every  day  on  both,  "  prose  by  daylight,  and 
poetry  by  night !  a  new  tandem,  which  I  never 
drove  before,  but  it  goes  smoothly  and  well." 
Whatever  he  undertook  he  attacked  vigorously, 
and  held  to  it,  no  matter  what  the  hindrances,  till 
it  was  done  ;  and  always  there  stayed  by  him  the 
conviction  that  presently  he  should  do  something 
better  ;  that  with  his  enlarged  experience  and  men 
tal  discipline  he  should  do  himself  justice  and 
reach  that  ideal  which  was  always  advancing  as  he 
went  on,  keeping  a  little  way  before  him,  but  just 
near  enough  to  allure  and  encourage. 

It  is  with  renewed  reverence  for  the  great,  loyal, 
tender  and  sweet  nature  of  Bayard  Taylor  that  one 
reads  such  sentences  as  these  : 

The  soul  must  sometimes  sweat  blood.  Nothing  great  is 
achieved  without  the  severest  discipline  of  heart  and  mind  ; 
nothing  is  well  done  that  is  done  easily. 


154      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

My  ruling  passion  as  an  author,  is  to  do  something  better 

—  to  overcome,  by  hard  work  and  honest  study,  the  disad 
vantages  of  early  sentimentality  and  shallowness. 

Mere  grace  of  phrase,  surface  brilliancy,  simulated  fire, 
cannot  endure  :  we  must  build  of  hewn  blocks  from  the  ever 
lasting  quarries. 

There  is  not  space  to  do  more  than  indicate  the 
different  kinds  of  work  he  engaged  in  ;  he  was  edi 
tor,  newspaper  correspondent,  lecturer,  translator, 
writer  of  books  of  travel,  poems,  novels  and  dramas. 
His  translation  of  Faust  —  an  arduous  undertaking 

—  is  pronounced  a  master-piece,  the  best  in  verse 
in  the  English  language.     He  succeeded  in  more 
departments  than  any  other  man  of  letters  in  this 
country  ;  and  no  other  ever  labored  so  incessantly 
accomplishing  so  much  in  the  same  time.     His  first 
book  (poetry)  was  published  when  he  was  nineteen, 
and  he  died  at  fifty-three ;  in  those  intervening 
thirty-four    years   he    had   written   no   less  than 
thirty-seven  volumes. 

I  have  directed  your  attention  to  his  books  of 
travel  almost  to  the  exclusion  of  the  others,  for 
reasons  which  you  will  understand,  and  because  an 


BAYARD    TAYIOR.  155 

interest  in  such  adventures  is  to  be  encouraged  ; 
everything  that  enlarges  the  boundaries  of  your 
thought,  while  giving  you  a  pure  and  healthful 
pleasure  and  an  added  zest  to  life,  is  worth  know 
ing,  is  worth  reading  ;  and,  though  I  have  told  you 
nothing  new,  perhaps  you  may  be  stimulated  to  a 
study  of  the  peculiarities  and  scenes  of  other  coun 
tries. 

I  wish  I  could  dwell  upon  his  love  of  animals, 
his  love  of  home,  and  speak  at  length  of  his  stories. 
It  was  always  a  great  pleasure  to  him  when  he 
struck  a  new  vein,  as  when  the  idea  of  writing  a 
novel  came  to  him;  and  he  constructed  the  plot  of 
Hannah  Thiirston,  and  set  to  work  enthusiastically, 
following  it  up  eventually  by  three  others.  He 
also  wrote  shorter  stories,  depicting  the  gentle  kind 
of  life  in  his  own  Quaker  neighborhood,  with  sweet, 
modest  Quaker  maidens,  like  Asenath  in  "  Friend 
Elis'  Daughter."  Again  he  hit  upon  a  happy 
thought  in  his  "  Home  Ballads  "  or  Pastorals  start 
ing  off  with  "  The  Quaker  Widow,"  which  he  said 
popped  into  his  head  one  day,  and  with  which  he 
was  as  much  pleased  as  a  child  with  a  new  toy. 


156      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

His  home  feeling  and  local  attachments  were 
strong.  Pennsylvania  was  the  State  of  his  birth, 
and  had  been  the  dwelling-place  of  his  kin  since 
the  days  of  William  Penn.  He  knew  the  men 
and  women  of  his  beloved  Chester  County  and  all 
their  ways,  so  that  those  "  Pastorals  "  are  warm 
and  mellow  with  human  love  and  experiences. 

Bayard  Taylor  was  born  at  Kennett  Square  in 
that  beautiful  county,  on  January  n,  1825,  and  it 
was  in  that  neighborhood  more  than  thirty  years 
later  that  he  built  his  new  home,  Cedarcroft,  the 
home  of  his  dreams,  just  as  he  had  long  hoped  to, 
just  where  his  heart's  desire  was  : 

But  when  I  build  a  house,  I  thought,  I  shall  build  it  upon 
the  ridge,  with  a  high  steeple  from  the  top  of  which  I  can 
see  far  and  wide. 

And  when  at  last  he  had  it,  he  writes  : 

While  I  live,  I  trust  I  shall  have  my  trees,  my  peaceful, 
idyllic  landscape,  my  free  country  life  at  least  half  the  year ; 
and  while  I  possess  so  much,  with  the  ties  out  of  which  all 
this  has  grown,  I  shall  own  one  hundred  thousand  shares  in 
the  Bank  of  Contentment 


BAYARD   TAYLOR.  157 

There  he  lived  delightfully,  most  happily  —  the 
ideal  life  come  true  —  for  a  time  exercising  mag 
nificent  hospitality,  on  a  scale  with  his  warm  and 
generous  nature,  throwing  wide  his  doors  for 
guests  who  came  at  will,  and  it  seemed  as  if  the 
fairies  who  wait  on  the  doers  of  good  deeds  had 
nothing  but  kindness  in  store  for  him.  His  rare 
qualities  were  appreciated  by  the  friends  who  were 
drawn  to  him  in  no  common  degree,  and  who, 
while  they  loved  him,  admired  the  industry  and 
patience  by  which  he  had  accomplished  so  much 
—  this  self-educated,  hard-working  man  who  was 
abundantly  entitled  to  all  the  praise  he  had  won  and 
the  success  he  had  achieved. 

But  reverses  came,  and  with  them  the  necessity 
of  change,  increased  toil  of  brain  and  production 
of  books  that  should  bring  in  money ;  and  a  harass 
ing,  wearing  anxiety  beset  him,  though  his  fortitude 
and  hope  never  failed.  In  1878  he  was  sent  as 
our  minister  to  Germany  —  and  such  a  send  off ! 
He  was  banqueted  by  his  literary  associates,  his 
German  fellow-citizens  made  addresses,  sung  songs, 
and  their  bands  played,  and  they  nearly  went  wild 


158      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

over  his  appointment.  No  man  ever  went  from  his 
native  land  so  cheered  on  and  with  such  happy  aug 
uries  as  he. 

Just  as  everything  was  beginning  to  brighten, 
and  he  was  preparing  to  settle  to  his  official  duties 
and  a  literary  task  he  anticipated  great  pleasure  in, 
he  died  at  Berlin,  on  October  19  of  that  same  year. 

The  beautiful  testimony  of  his  friends  was  in 
newspapers  all  over  the  country,  telling  what  a 
charm  there  was  about  him,  how  frank  and  sweet- 
tempered  and  generous  he  was,  how  true  and 
honorable,  how  high  his  aims,  what  a  delightful 
companion,  how  faithful  in  his  attachment,  how 
earnest  in  his  work  ;  and  poets  who  had  loved 
him  put  their  sorrow  into  verse. 

You  will  remember  Longfellow's  lines : 

Traveller  !  in  what  realms  afar, 
In  what  planet,  in  what  star, 

In  what  vast  aerial  space 
Shines  the  light  upon  thy  face  ? 

In  what  gardens  of  delight 
Rest  thy  weary  feet  to-night  ? 


BAYARD   TAYLOR.  159 

And  the  questioning  of  Aldrich  : 

What  unknown  way  is  this  that  he  has  gone, 

Our  Bayard,  in  such  silence  and  alone  ? 

What  new,  strange  quest  has  tempted  him  once  more 

To  leave  us  ? 

NOTE.  —  He  wrote  Views  Afoot ;  or  Europe  seen  with 
Knapsack  and  Staff ;  El  Dorado  ;  or  Adventures  in  the  Path 
of  Empire  ;  A  Journey  to  Central  Africa  ;  The  Lands  of  the 
Saracens ;  A  Visit  to  India,  China  and  Japan ;  Northern 
Travel ;  Summer  and  Winter  Pictures  of  Sweden,  Denmark 
and  Lapland  ;  Travels  in  Greece  and  Russia  ;  At  Home  and 
Abroad ;  Colorado,  a  Summer  Trip  ;  Byways  of  Europe  ; 
Travels  in  Arabia  ;  Egypt  and  Iceland  (all  of  which  you 
should  read  in  connection  with  the  Biography  and  in  Chron 
ological  order) ;  a  book  for  young  people  called  The  Boys  of 
other  Countries ;  a  collection  of  stories  entitled  Beauty  and 
the  Beast ;  and  Tales  of  Home  ;  also  the  four  novels,  Hannah 
Thurston,  John  Godfrey's  fortunes,  The  Story  of  Kennett, 
Joseph  and  his  Friend.  The  list  includes  also  many  volumes 
of  poetry,  drama,  translation  and  compilations.  The  biog 
raphy  which  has  for  title  Life  and  Letters  of  Bayard  Taylor, 
edited  by  Marie  Hansen-  Taylor  and  Horace  E.  Scudder,  is  in 
two  volumes,  and  of  great  interest 


HENRY    DAVID   THOREAU. 


IX. 

HENRY    DAVID    THOREAU  ;     AND    OTHER    "  OUT-OF- 
DOOR  "     WRITERS. 

>• 

THIS  name  stands  for  an  odd  kind  of  man 
and  original  writer.  Thoreau  has  always 
been  looked  upon  as  one  of  the  unique  characters 
among  American  men  of  letters.  (With  what  a 
half  satiric  smile  he  would  have  received  that  term 
"  men-of-letters  "  as  applied  to  himself  ! )  It  is 
said  by  those  who  do  not  admire  him  that  he 
prided  himself  on  doing  things  in  a  different  way 
from  common  people  ;  while  on  the  other  hand, 
to  those  who  take  pains  to  understand  him,  the 
evidence  seems  conclusive  that  he  could  no  more 
have  helped  being  what  he  was  than  a  partridge, 
or  a  fox,  or  any  other  creature  of  the  wood  can 
help  acting  according  to  the  instincts  it  was  born 
with.  No  one  was  ever  like  him,  and  perhaps  no 

one  would  care  to  be. 

163 


164     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

He  has  been  over-rated,  he  has  been  disparaged. 
The  matter  that  has  been  written  about  him,  in 
the  shape  of  criticisms,  studies,  biographies,  is  out 
of  all  porportion  to  his  own  writings  all  put  to 
gether,  which  proves  him  to  be  a  person  worthy 
of  consideration  ;  and  there  is  not  much  doubt 
that  he  will  have  a  permanent  place  in  American 
literature. 

Of  the  many  authors  who  have  made  Concord, 
Massachusetts,  so  famous,  Emerson,  Hawthorne, 
Margaret  Fuller,  the  Alcotts  and  others,  he  is  the 
only  one  who  was  born  there.  To  him  Concord 
represented  the  whole  universe,  and  was  the  only 
place  worth  living  in.  Like  the  man  in  Pollok's 
verse,  he 

.    .    thought  the  visual  line  that  girt  him  round, 
The  world's  extreme. 

That  is,  for  all  purposes  needful  for"  himself  and 
his  own  culture  ;  and  saving  only  the  look  out 
into  the  world  beyond  which  he  had  in  his  college 
days  at  Harvard,  and  the  trips  he  took  to  the 
Maine  woods,  Cape  Cod,  the  West,  and  some 


HENRY    DAVID   THOREAU.  165 

others,  he  had  only,  and  wished  only,  Concord 
experiences.  He  thought  he  could  find  and  learn 
everything  there  that  was  worth  having  or  know 
ing  ;  and  by  his  insistency  upon  this  point  he 
gained  a  reputation  for  egotism  and  absurd  exag 
geration  of  the  resources  of  that  historic  town. 

The  Thoreaus  were  of  several  mixed  races, 
which  circumstance  has  been  given  as  a  reason 
for  peculiar  combination  of  qualities  in  this  eccen 
tric  author.  His  great-grandmother  was  French, 
his  grandmother  Scotch,  his  mother  a  New  Eng- 
lander,  his  grandfather  a  native  of  the  Isle  of 
Jersey.  He  inherited  a  certain  kind  of  shrewd 
wisdom,  independence  and  wit ;  he  had  a  keen 
way  of  looking  at  life,  with  a  fair  amount  of  every 
day  sense,  a  poetic  taste  and  a  quality  of  reti 
cence,  self-command  and  satisfaction  with  self 
which  give  a  distinctive  character  to  all  his  writ 
ings.  There  were  three  other  children,  all  tal 
ented  ;  John,  of  whom  he  was  very  fond,  Helen, 
and  Sophia  who  died  a  few  years  since  —  the  last 
of  th§  Thoreau  name  in  America  with  the  excep 
tion  of  one  elderly  maiden  aunt. 


1 66     PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

After  his  college  days  were  over,  at  twenty, 
Henry  found  it  impossible  to  give  himself  up  to 
any  special  trade  or  profession,  though  eventually 
his  tastes  led  him  to  become  a  surveyor  —  one  of 
the  best,  so  that  Emerson,  speaking  of  the  won 
derful  fitness  of  his  body  and  mind,  says,  "  He 
could  pace  sixteen  rods  more  accurately  than 
another  man  could  measure  them  with  rod  and 
chain,"  and  that  he  was  held  in  the  highest  regard 
for  his  practical  knowledge  about  lands  and  boun 
daries. 

His  first  trip  of  interest  was  taken  in  company 
with  his  beloved  brother ;  and  he  put  his  obser 
vations  into  a  book  (his  first),  A  Week  on  the  Con 
cord  and  Merrimack  Rivers,  which  had  so  poor  a 
sale  that  he  had  most  of  the  edition  returned  to 
him  by  the  publishers ;  it  was  of  this  that  he 
wrote  in  his  diary  the  good-natured  memoranda 
so  often  quoted,  that  he  had  a  library  of  nine 
hundred  volumes,  "seven  hundred  of  which  I 
wrote  myself."  In  spite  of  its  lack  of  success,  it 
is  an  attractive  book,  and  though  there  have  been 
so  many  accounts  of  boating  trips  since,  his  nar- 


HENRY  DAVID  THOREAU.          167 

rative  is  not  out  of  date.  He  makes  much  of  the 
starting,  and  of  every  slight  adventure,  according 
to  his  wont ;  sees  the  hero  in  a  very  ordinary  per 
son,  and  great  possibilities  in  the  commonest  life ; 
sees  everything  —  nothing  ever  escapes  his  eyes 
—  and  he  philosophizes  and  says  things  to  set  one 
thinking. 

It  was  the  same  always,  wherever  he  went. 
He  was  a  student  of  Nature,  of  himself,  and  of  a 
few  choice  authors.  The  pursuits  and  ambitions 
which  engross  most  men  he  was  more  than  indif 
ferent  to.  Wealth,  position,  social  influence  were 
of  no  account  to  him.  In  his  nature  there  was 
the  Indian  fondness  for  open-air  life,  and  the 
sharp  instincts  and  unerring  sagacity  of  an  Indian ; 
in  knowledge  of  wood-craft  few  men  in  New  Eng 
land  have  surpassed  him.  He  knew  the  ways 
and  haunts,  the  times  and  seasons  of  the  wild 
creatures  in  the  woods  and  waters ;  and  to  him 
they  were  never  wild,  but  almost  came  at  his  bid 
ding.  One  of  his  intimate  friends  says : 

"  Sometimes  I  have  gone  with  Thoreau  and  his 
young  comrades  for  an  expedition  on  the  river. 


1 68      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

.  .  .  He  would  tell  stories  of  the  Indians  who 
once  dwelt  thereabout,  until  the  children  almost 
looked  to  see  a  red  man  skulking  with  his  arrow 
on  the  shore ;  and  every  plant  or  flower  on  the 
bank  or  in  the  water,  and  every  fish,  turtle,  frog, 
lizard  about  us  was  transformed  by  the  wand  of 
his  knowledge  from  the  low  form  into  which  the 
spell  of  our  ignorance  had  reduced  it  into  a  mys 
tic  beauty.  One  of  his  surprises  was  to  thrust 
his  hand  softly  into  the  water,  and  as  softly  raise 
up  before  our  astonished  eyes  a  large  bright  fish, 
which  lay  as  contentedly  in  his  hand  as  if  they 
were  old  acquaintances.  If  the  fish  had  also 
dropped  a  penny  from  its  mouth,  it  could  not 
have  been  a  more  miraculous  proceeding  to  us." 
He  did  not  use  a  gun,  and  never  captured  ani 
mals  except  in  gentle  ways,  and  afterwards  re 
leased  them.  Squirrels  would  run  up  his  arm, 
and  the  partridge,  shyest  of  birds,  would  lead  her 
brood  to  the  door  of  his  cabin  in  the  woods. 
You  should  read  a  fine  paper  on  Thoreau,  by 
Emerson,  who  was  his  warm  friend,  to  see  how 
this  quality  of  attracting  dumb  animals  was  exer- 


HENRY    DAVID   THOREAU.  169 

cised,  as  well  as  to  see  what  estimate  the  poet- 
philosopher  put  upon  his  young  townsman,  the 
poet-naturalist.  Much  fuller,  however,  and  more 
elaborate  with  regard  to  that  trait  in  Thoreau's 
character  is  a  volume  with  which  you  ought  to  be 
acquainted,  called  Thoreau :  His  Life  and  Aims. 
A  Study.  By  H.  A.  Page,  an  Englishman. 

Everybody  who  has  ever  heard  of  Thoreau  at  all 
knows  at  least  one  thing  about  him,  and  that  is 
that  he  had  a  hermitage  by  Walden  Pond.  It 
was  about  two  miles  from  his  mother's  door,  on 
Emerson's  land,  and  Alcott  and  Channing  helped 
cut  down  the  trees  of  which  the  little  house  was 
made  —  a  tiny  building  with  just  room  enough 
for  his  few  pieces  of  furniture,  and  none  to  spare, 
for  whenever  he  had  occasion  to  sweep  and  tidy 
up,  he  used  to  set  everything  out  of  doors.  His 
life  there  was  a  sort  of  experiment,  but  he  de 
lighted  in  the  freedom  from  conventional  ways 
and  in  the  seclusion,  or  he  would  never  have  tried 
it  for  two  years.  Often  Emerson  or  some  other 
choice  friend  would  go  to  visit  him,  and  they  had 
many  an  hour  of  lofty  converse  about  his  favorite 


170     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

authors,  Chaucer  and  Spenser,  Homer  and  Virgil, 
Milton  and  Wordsworth. 

It  was  a  primitive  way  of  living,  but  not  exactly 
one's  ideal  to  be  followed  for  any  length  of  time, 
however  much  one  might  be  in  love  with  Nature ; 
he  varied  his  gardening  in  his  little  patch  of 
ground  with  surveying,  and  taking  long  tramps 
to  see  the  sun  set  from  some  hilltop,  to  search 
into  the  habits  of  some  wild  creature,  to  find 
some  favorite  flower  and  be  on  the  spot  at  its 
time  of  blooming  —  foolish  excursions  most  per 
sons  would  call  them,  but  to  this  keen  observer, 
this  ardent  lover  of  bird  and  blossom,  nothing 
was  trivial  or  common. 

He  was  first  of  all  a  naturalist,  and  his  life  and 
work  are  of  consequence  as  having  given  an  im 
pulse  in  that  direction  whose  value  and  extent 
can  hardly  be  over-rated ;  but  he  was  also  a  fine 
writer,  careful  and  discriminating  in  the  use  of 
language,  and  imparting  to  all  he  wrote  a  kind 
of  quaintness  and  originality  which  fitly  represent 
his  own  unique  personality.  From  association 
with  Emerson  he  had  caught  an  Emersonian  tone 


HENRY    DAVID   THOREAU.  17 1 

which  sometimes  appears  in  a  terse  way  of  putting 
things,  as  in  such  passages  as  these : 

The  outward  is  only  the  outside  of  that  which  is  within. 
Men  are  not  concealed  under  habits,  but  are  revealed  by 
them ;  they  are  their  true  clothes. 

In  the  long  run  men  hit  only  what  they  aim  at. 

Read  the  best  books  first,  or  you  may  not  have  a  chance 
to  read  them  at  all. 

I  shall  not  be  as  cheap  to  myself  if  I  see  that  another 
values  me. 

What  a  man  does,  compared  with  what  he  is,  is  but  a 
small  part.  .  .  .  One  may  well  feel  chagrined  when  he 
finds  he  can  do  nearly  all  he  can  conceive. 

Life  is  a  battle  in  which  you  are  to  show  your  pluck,  and 
woe  be  to  the  coward.  .  .  .  Men  were  born  to  succeed, 
not  to  fail. 

That  sentence  in  italics  is  for  you  to  think 
about  in  earnest. 

But  in  the  main  Thoreau  is  himself  and  no 
other.  His  prose  is  fragrant  of  the  woods ;  it 
carries  you  to  the  uplands  and  brings  the  air  of 
the  new  dawn  to  your  cheek ;  you  feel  the  morn 
ing  in  all  your  veins  ;  the  invigorating  atmosphere 
of  the  mountain  tops  is  about  you  ;  for  the  time 


172       PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

you  are  lifted  up  out  of  the  pettiness  of  everyday 
living,  and  see  how  pure  and  sweet,  how  restful 
and  helpful  the  sylvan  influences  and  the  skyey 
influences  may  be.  You  will,  in  time,  grow  to 
like  the  companionship  of  this  writer,  and  while 
you  pass  over  his  oddities  you  will  accept  him 
as  a  guide  through  the  woodlands  and  along  the 
streams;  and  the  more  you  observe,  the  more 
you  will  enjoy  such  bits  of  minute  descriptions  as 
you  will  find  on  almost  every  page,  like  the  fol 
lowing  about  the  peeping  of  his  favorite  hylodes 
in  March  : 

I  hear  it  now  faintly  from  through  and  over  the  bare  gray 
twigs  and  the  sheeny  needles  of  an  oak  and  pine  wood,  and 
from  over  the  russet  fields  beyond.  .  .  .  It  is  a  singu 
larly  emphatic  and  ear-piercing  proclamation  of  animal  life, 
when,  with  a  very  few  and  slight  exceptions,  vegetation  is 
yet  dormant.  .  .  .  The  shrill  piping  of  the  hylodes 
locates  itself  nowhere  in  particular.  It  seems  to  take  its 
rise  at  an  indefinite  distance  over  wood  and  hill  and  pasture, 
from  clefts  and  hollows  in  the  March  wind.  It  is  not  so 
much  of  the  earth,  earthy,  as  of  the  air,  airy.  It  rises  at 
once  on  the  wind  and  is  at  home  there  and  we  are  incapable 
of  tracing  it  further  back. 


HENRY    DAVID    THOREAU.  173 

Or  what  he  says  about  the  red  squirrel,  which 

makes  so  many  queer  sounds,  and  so  different  from  one 
another,  that  you  would  think  they  came  from  half  a  dozen 
creatures.  .  .  .  You  might  say  that  he  successfully  ac 
complished  the  difficult  feat  of  singing  and  whistling  at  the 
same  time. 

The  chief  teaching  to  be  had  from  his  writings 
is  that  there  is  unbounded  wealth  of  happiness 
and  a  liberal  education  in  using  one's  eyes.  He 
says : 

The  woman  who  sits  in  the  house  and  sees  is  a  match  for 
a  stirring  captain.  .  .  .  We  are  as  much  as  we  see. 

This  belief  he  expresses  more  fully,  and  in 
pungent  words,  in  his  fine  paper  on  "Autumnal 
Tints."  Often  there  is  a  dash  of  humor  about 
him,  like  this  : 

The  youth  gets  together  his  materials  to  build  a  bridge  to 
the  moon,  or  perchance  a  palace  or  temple  on  the  earth, 
and  at  length  the  middle-aged  man  concludes  to  build  a 
wood-shed  with  them. 

Or  he  follows  out  a  grotesque  fancy,  as  in  this 
case: 


174     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG   FOLKS. 

The  age  of  the  world  is  great  enough  for  our  imagina 
tions,  even  according  to  the  Mosaic  account,  without  bor 
rowing  any  years  from  the  geologist.  From  Adam  and  Eve 
at  one  leap  sheer  down  to  the  deluge,  and  then  through  the 
ancient  monarchies,  through  Babylon  and  Thebes,  Brahma 
and  Abraham,  to  Greece  and  the  Argonauts;  whence  we 
might  start  again,  with  Orpheus  and  the  Trojan  War,  the 
Pyramids  and  the  Olympic  games,  and  Homer  and  Athens 
for  oar  stages  ;  and  after  a  breathing  space  at  the  building  of 
Rome,  continue  our  journey  down  through  Odin  and  Christ 
to  —  America.  It  is  a  wearisome  while,  and  yet  the  lives  of 
but  sixty  old  women  such  as  live  under  the  hill,  say  of  a 
century  each,  strung  together,  are  sufficient  to  reach  over 
the  whole  ground.  Taking  hold  of  hands  they  would  span 
the  interval  from  Eve  to  my  own  mother.  A  respectable 
tea-party  merely  —  whose  gossip  would  be  Universal  His 
tory.  The  fourth  old  woman  from  myself  suckled  Colum 
bus  —  the  ninth  was  nurse  to  the  Norman  Conqueror  —  the 
nineteenth  was  the  Virgin  Mary —  the  twenty-fourth  the  Cu- 
masan  Sibyl  — the  thirtieth  was  at  the  Trojan  War  and  Helen 
her  name  —  the  thirty-eighth  was  Queen  Semiramis  —  the 
sixtieth  was  Eve  the  mother  of  mankind.  So  much  for  the 

Old  woman  that  lives  under  the  hill, 
And  if  she's  not  gone  she  lives  there  still. 

It  will  not  take  many  great-granddaughters  of  hers  to  be  in 
at  the  death  of  time. 


HENRY    DAVID   THOREAU.  175 

But  a  few  selections  do  not  in  any  sense  repre 
sent  Thoreau.  His  books  are  all  worth  careful 
reading.  No  one  has  given  a  better  account  of 
Cape  Cod  than  he,  and  if  you  should  ever  happen 
to  be  in  that  strange  region  of  downs  and  wind 
swept  spaces  at  Truro,  and  where  the  Highland 
Light-house  stands  solitary  above  a  lonely  sea, 
you  will  find  in  his  little  volume  the  truest,  most 
appreciative  guide  you  could  have.  His  Walden 
has  become  a  kind  of  classic,  and  by  that  he  is 
most  widely  known. 

Thoreau  does  not  seem  to  belong  to  our  every 
day  world,  but  away  back  among  sylvan  folk  of 
the  days  of  fable,  and  that  is  how  Hawthorne 
regarded  him,  for  he  says  he  drew  his  first  con 
ception  of  Donatello  (in  The  Marble  Faun),  from 
him.  But  with  all  his  eccentricity  and  egotism, 
there  is  one  emulative  thing  to  be  said  of  him  — 
he  lived  his  own  life,  he  was  honest,  without  sham, 
and  while  clinging  to  his  own  ideas  he  did  not 
consciously  violate  those  of  other  men. 

His  last  days  were  spent  in  careful  revision  of 
his  writings  ;  a  friend  who  visited  him  says  he 


176      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

found  him  lying  back  in  an  easy  chair,  his  mother 
standing  behind  him  bathing  his  head,  and  Sophia 
on  one  side  with  a  pile  of  manuscript  which, 
measuring  with  his  hand,  he  would  now  and  then 
feebly  make  a  suggestion  about.  His  mother 
said,  "  Henry  wished  everything  of  a  light  charac 
ter  removed  from  his  writings  —  he  thinks  life  too 
serious  for  anything  trifling."  Death  came  to  him 
in  the  Concord  home  he  was  so  fond  of,  and  his 
grave  is  in  Sleepy  Hollow,  marked  with  a  brown 
stone  in  which  is  a  sunken  panel  with  the  inscrip 
tion  :  "Henry  D.  Thoreau,  born  July  12,  1817; 
died  May  6,  1862."  The  Walden  hut  is  gone,  but 
arrowy  pines  still  shelter  the  place,  the  little  clear 
ing  is  open  towards  the  lovely  pond,  and  a  cross 
set  in  the  midst  of  a  heap  of  stones  marks  the 
site  where  Thoreau  lived  —  a  pathetic  cairn  to 
which  the  chance  passer-by,  or  visitor  from  afar, 
adds  the  tribute  of  a  memorial  stone. 

Nothing  in  recent  American  literature  has  been 
more  remarkable  than  the  increase  of  writings  on 
the  class  of  subjects  in  which  Thoreau  was  pio 
neer.  One  of  the  first  (whom  there  is  danger  of 


HENRY    DAVID    THOREAU.  177 

your  overlooking,  since  new  writers  are  crowding 
along  so  fast),  was  Wilson  Flagg,  who  was  born 
in  Beverly,  Massachusetts,  November  5,  1805,  and 
died  in  Cambridge,  May  4,  1878.  His  first  book, 
Studies  in  the  Field  and  Forest,  was  published  in 
1857.  He  afterwards  published  Woods  and  By 
ways  of  New  England,  and  Birds  and  Seasons  of 
New  England — three  volumes  with  tempting  titles, 
and  contents  which  did  not  disappoint  their  prom 
ise.  He  made  no  claim  to  technical  knowledge, 
but  wrote  because  he  loved  the  subjects ;  in  his 
own  words  :  "  My  book  differs  from  learned  works 
as  a  lover's  description  of  his  lady's  hand  would 
differ  from  Bell's  anatomical  description  of  it." 
One  fancies  him  a  small,  slender  man,  taking  long 
walks  about  the  country,  along  the  old  roads  and 
grassy  cart-paths  through  the  woods  which  he  has 
pictured  for  us,  sauntering  rather  than  keeping  on 
like  your  true  pedestrian,  lingering  often  to  de 
light  his  eye  in  some  scene  of  rural  beauty,  or  to 
watch  the  movements  of  some  bird  and  listen  to 
its  song,  then  going  home  to  write  in  poetical 
prose  his  pleasant  experiences. 


178     PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

So,  one  after  another,  the  lovers  of  sylvan  life 
have  taken  up  the  pen  from  pure  delight  in  their 
favorite  theme.  Thirty  years  or  more  ago  Colonel 
Higginson  wrote  those  Out  of  Door  Papers,  which 
"  H.  H."  thought  were  in  the  most  perfect  style 
the  English  language  is  capable  of.  But,  in  her 
modest  unconsciousness  of  her  own  matchless 
gift  of  expression,  she  could  not  have  foreseen 
what  the  readers  who  sorrow  over  her  death  are 
keenly  mindful  of  —  that  for  prose  which  should 
exceed  in  force  and  beauty  that  which  she  herself 
wrote,  we  should  have  far  to  seek.  Read  her  Bits 
of  Travel  and  her  Bits  of  Travel  about  Home  for 
some  of  the  choicest  paragraphs  that  can  any 
where  be  found.  Here,  for  instance,  is  the  past- 
ture  we  know  as  we  know  our  own  door-yard  — 
so  faithfully  can  the  master-hand  paint  a  typical 
"  bit  "  of  New  England  territory  : 

Considered  as  pastures,  from  an  animal's  point  of  view 
they  must  be  disappointing ;  stones  for  bread  to  a  cruel  ex 
tent  they  give.  Considered  as  landscape,  they  have,  to  a 
trained  eye,  a  charm  and  fascination  which  smooth,  fulsome 
meadow  levels  cannot  equal.  There  can  be  no  more  ex- 


HENRY    DAVID    THOREAU.  179 

quisite  tones  of  color,  no  daintier  mosaic,  than  one  sees  if 
he  looks  attentively  on  an  August  day  at  these  fields  of  gray 
granite,  lichen-painted  boulders,  lying  in  beds  of  light-green 
ferns  bordered  by  pink  and  white  spiraeas,  and  lighted  up  by 
red  lilies. 

Could  anything  surpass  that  ?  From  just  such 
beds  of  fern  have  you  not  drawn  forth  long  stems 
of  luscious  strawberries,  and  just  such  red  lilies 
have  you  not  borne  away  in  sheaves  ? 

Not  a  word  of  the  descriptions  of  natural  scen 
ery,  outward  life,  written  by  "  H.  H."  can  you 
afford  to  skip ;  not  an  essay  or  passage  of  the 
kind  by  Miss  Jewett  can  you  afford  not  to  read. 
You  will  be  interested  in  seeing  how  different  the 
style  of  two  or  three  writers  on  the  same  subject 
(yet  sometimes  how  similar!)  as  in  the  case  of 
Thoreau  who  wrote  about  the  Maine  woods,  and 
Theodore  Winthrop,  who  in  a  series  called  Life  in 
the  Open  Air,  wrote  of  the  same  region.  You 
might  compare  also  two  passages  about  a  mount 
ain,  or,  for  another  topic,  see  how  Winthrop  treats 
a  loon  and  its  uncanny  cry,  see  what  Thoreau  has 
to  tell,  and  then  what  John  Burroughs  says  about 


l8o     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

the  same  thing  —  you  will  find  it  in  "  Touches  of 
Nature,"  in  his  Birds  and  Poets. 

Of  this  last-named  writer,  now  in  the  prime  and 
fulness  of  his  power,  you  surely  know  a  great  deal, 
for  his  essays  are  all  about  you,  and  appearing  in 
the  magazines  of  the  day.  What  more  attractive 
reading  than  his  Wake  Robin,  Winter  Sunshine, 
Birds  and  Poets,  Locusts  and  Wild  Honey,  Pepacton, 
and  Fresh  Fields  ?  A  virile,  crisp,  breezy  writer, 
whose  pages  lose  nothing  in  picturesquenesswhen 
compared  with  any  American  author.  The  pa 
pers  in  those  volumes  are  enough  to  kindle  in 
you  an  ardent  interest  in  the  subject  we  have 
been  dwelling  upon,  even  if  you  had  not  the  faint 
est  inclination  that  way  before. 

It  would  require  far  wider  limits  than  are  al 
lowed  me  here  to  speak  of  all  the  authors  who 
have  made  this  theme  an  attractive  one  in  our 
literature.  Lowell  has  charming  papers  among 
his  few  volumes  of  prose,  such  as  "My  Garden 
Acquaintance,"  and  others  you  will  find  no  diffi 
culty  in  selecting.  Susan  Fenimore  Cooper  (daugh 
ter  of  the  great  novelist)  wrote  more  than  thirty 


HENRY    DAVID   THOREAU.  l8l 

years  ago  a  record  of  the  sylvan  year,  which  she 
called  Rural  Hours.  Celia  Thaxter  described  in 
her  Among  the  Isles  of  Shoals  all  the  phases  of 
flower  life,  and  the  wild  characteristics  of  those 
bleak  but  most  fascinating  islands  off  the  New 
Hampshire  coast  —  a  book  which  it  is  a  joy  to 
read,  autobiographic,  descriptive,  brimming  over 
with  poetic  thought. 

Such  a  library  of  out-of-door  literature  by  our 
own  countrymen  and  countrywomen,  and  about 
different  sections  of  our  own  country,  as  one  might 
have  !  A  summer  corner,  where  we  should  seem 
transported  to  the  cool,  green  solitudes  of  woods 
far  inland,  to  glens  among  the  mountains,  to 
beaches  lapped  by  ocean  waves.  The  tonic  of 
the  hills  and  the  sea  is  in  them,  the  invigorating 
freshness  of  the  west  winds,  the  song  of  birds,  the 
sound  of  waters,  the  incense  of  flowers.  You 
would  find  in  that  nook  some  choice  papers  by 
Joel  Benton,  which  he  meant  to  put  into  a  book 
to  be  called  Under  the  Apple  Boughs  (perhaps  he 
has  done  so)  ;  a  volume  or  more  by  Maurice 
Thompson,  By-ways  and  Bird  Notes,  for  one  ;  you 


1 82      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

will  find  the  classic  pastorals  (for  such  they  must 
be  termed,  incongruous  though  it  sound),  of  Edith 
Thomas ;  the  Adirondack  sketches  of  Charles 
Dudley  Warner;  certain  volumes  by  Ik  Marvel 
(of  which  more  by  and  by).  How  long  the  list 
might  be  made,  not  forgetting  one  lately  pub 
lished,  Tenants  of  an  old  Farm,  by  Dr.  McCook, 
with  its  comical  adaptations  by  Dan  Beard ;  and, 
also  new,  A  Naturalist 's  Rambles  about  Home,  and 
Upland  and  Meadow,  both  about  that  famous 
region  for  naturalists,  the  New  Jersey  creeks  and 
barrens,  both  by  Dr.  Charles  C.  Abbott.  Finally 
our  magazines  and  our  book  stores  abound  with 
this  class  of  literature,  so  that  there  is  an  embar 
rassment  of  riches,  from  North,  East,  South  and 
West,  all  in  the  same  general  line  with  Thoreau, 
but  treated  in  as  many  ways  as  there  are  authors. 


NOTE.  —  Thoreau's  prose  books  are  A  Week  on  the  Con 
cord  and  Merrimack  Rivers,  Walden,  or  Life  in  the  Woods, 
A  Yankee  in  Canada,  Excursions  in  Field  and  Forest,  J*he 
Maine  Woods,  Cape  Cod,  Early  Spring  in  Massachusetts, 
and  Summer.  The  two  last  named  are  selections  from  his 
journals,  edited  by  H.  G.  O.  Blake.  Two  of  the  most  at 
tractive  among  his  single  papers,  are  "  Autumnal  Tints " 
and  "  Wild  Apples."  There  is  a  biography  by  Wm.  E.  Chan- 
ning,  a  "  Life  "  by  F.  B.  Sanborn,  and  "  A  Study  "  of  his  life 
and  aims,  by  H.  A.  Page. 


FRANCIS    PARKMAN. 


FRANCIS   PARKMAN. 

IN  reading  history,  the  intelligent  and  profitable 
way  is  to  have  some  plan,  and  then  follow  it 
out.  Select  a  certain  period,  and  make  yourself 
as  thoroughly  acquainted  as  possible  with  that; 
and  for  collateral  reading,  take  biographies  or  other 
books  bearing  upon  the  times,  individuals,  leading 
events,  or  the  country  you  are  engaged  upon ;  by 
doing  which  you  may  have  the  benefit  of  some 
side-lights  upon  your  subject,  and  also  the  opinion 
of  writers  from  some  other  point-of-view,  helping 
you  to  form  your  own  opinion.  It  is  often  the  case 
that  one  reads  history  in  a  kind  of  hap-hazard  way, 
now  a  little  about  England,  now  the  Middle  Ages, 
now  Greece  or  Rome.  The  result  is  an  accumula 
tion  of  incidents  and  dates  ;  of  a  kind  of  informa 
tion  which  is  not  knowledge.  You  have  a  confused 


1 86      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

mass  in  your  mind  which  you  cannot  use,  a  cK»-"S, 
a  miscellany ;  even  after  much  reading  and  study 
you  are  in  deplorable  uncertainty  about  the  momen 
tous  causes  which  have  brought  about  the  very 
revolutions  in  government,  dethronement  of  sover 
eigns,  overthrow  of  nations  which  you  have  just 
given  your  time  to.  It  is  a  lamentable  failure 
to  appreciate  the  chief  aim  for  which  history  is 
written. 

Already  you  have  had  Prescott  brought  before 
you  with  his  subjects  of  discovery,  adventures  and 
conquest.  Another  series  is  the  splendid  group 
which  the  genius  of  Motley  made  as  captivating 
as  romance,  covering  a  period  of  portentous  im 
port  to  more  than  one  of  the  great  European  pow 
ers.  Coming  to  our  own  United  States,  you  have 
the  general  history  by  Hildreth,  and  that  upon 
which  the  venerable  and  venerated  George  Ban 
croft  has  been  fifty  years  engaged;  besides  the 
many  local  and  topical  works  to  aid  in  a  clear 
knowledge  of  certain  regions  or  subjects,  such  as 
Palfrey's  History  of  New  England,  and  Frothing- 
ham's  Siege  of  Boston,  These  men  are  our  own  his- 


FRANCIS    PARKMAN.  187 

torians,  American  authors,  eminent  for  scholarship, 
for  painstaking  research. 

There  is  another  who  stands  without  a  superior, 
second  to  no  American  historian  living  or  dead ; 
second  to  no  historian  who  has  written  in  the  Eng 
lish  tongue  —  Francis  Parkman. 

As  early  as  the  age  of  eighteen  he  formed  the 
purpose  of  writing  on  "  French- American  history," 
limiting  himself  to  the  contest  which  ended  with 
the  death  of  Montcalm  and  Wolfe,  the  fall  of  Que 
bec  and  of  the  French  dominion  in  North  Amer 
ica.  But  afterwards  he  extended  his  plan  so  as  to 
include  the  entire  subject  of  French  colonization  ; 
and  in  carrying  it  out  he  arranged  it  in  separate 
narratives  with  different  titles. 

To-day,  after  forty-five  years,  it  stands  complete, 
with  the  exception  of  a  comparatively  unimportant 
portion  of  seven  years,  by  and  by  to  come  into 
place ;  and  in  his  own  words,  "  When  this  gap  is 
filled,  the  series  of  '  France  and  England  in  North 
America'  will  form  a  continuous  history  of  the 
French  occupation  of  the  continent."  A  series 
unsurpassed  for  brilliancy,  for  the  quality  of  the 


l88     PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

literary  workmanship,  accuracy,  scholarship  and 
picturesque  narrative.  You  can  hardly  know  what 
a  charm  history  may  have  until  you  have  made 
yourself  acquainted  with  these  volumes ;  in  his 
hands  it  is  like  a  story-book. 

His  first  movement  in  preparation  was  a  trip  to 
the  Rocky  Mountains  for  the  purpose  of  studying 
savage  life,  customs  and  character  among  the  wild 
est  tribes.  With  a  friend,  like  himself  just  out  of 
college,  he  set  out  from  St.  Louis  in  the  April  of 
1846  and,  after  various  adventures,  left  him  and 
went  on  with  a  hunter-guide  and  lived  among  the 
Sioux;  sleeping  in  their  wigwams,  eating  their 
detestable  food,  sharing  all  their  hardships  and  rov 
ing  life,  following  the  hunt  and  the  war-path,  wit 
nessing  their  ceremonies ;  in  short  he  was  domes 
ticated  for  several  weeks  with  a  horde  of  the  most 
thorough  savages ;  as  utterly  lost  to  civilization  as 
if  no  such  thing  existed,  and  sometimes  so  ill  that 
he  expected  to  leave  his  bones  there  in  Oregon. 
No  white  man,  unless  it  might  have  been  a  fur 
trader,  could  have  had  better  opportunity.  His 
nerve  and  determination  never  failed ;  he  says  he 


FRANCIS    PARKMAN.  189 

placed  himself  in  positions  so  perilous  because 
"  my  business  was  observation,  and  I  was  willing 
to  pay  dearly  for  the  opportunity  of  exercising  it." 
After  his  return  his  experiences  were  put  into 
a  book,  The  Oregon  Trail,  brim  full  of  novel  situa 
tions,  perils  and  escapes,  buffalo-hunts  in  the  region 
of  the  Black  Hills,  and  all  the  hideous  details  of 
that  savage  kind  of  living.  ^Youwill  see  just  what 
Indians  were  at  the  Far  West  forty  years  ago.  No 
such  account  could  be  written  to-day,  for  that  state 
of  things  has  passed  away  forever.  He  went  boldly 
to  the  lodge  of  an  old  chief,  and  had  the  guide  an 
nounce  that  he  had  come  to  live  with  him  ;  and  as 
hospitality  under  such  circumstances  is  an  Indian 
virtue  he  became  one  of  the  family  of  Kongra 
Tonga.  Here  is  a  passage  after  the  big  buffalo 
hunt  was  over: 

I  entered  the  lodge  of  my  host.  His  squaw  instantly 
brought  me  food  and  water,  and  spread  a  buffalo-robe  for 
me  to  lie  upon ;  and  being  much  fatigued  I  lay  down  and  fell 
asleep.  In  about  an  hour,  the  entrance  of  Kongra  Tonga, 
with  his  arms  smeared  with  blood  to  the  elbows,  awoke 
me.  .  .  His  squaw  gave  him  a  vessel  of  water  for  wash 
ing,  set  before  him  a  bowl  of  boiled  meat,  and,  as  he  was 


I QO     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

eating,  pulled  off  his  bloody  moccasins  and  placed  fresh 
ones  on  his  feet.  .  .  .  And  now  the  hunters,  two  or 
three  at  a  time,  came  rapidly  in  and,  each  consigning  his 
horses  to  the  squaws,  entered  his  lodge  with  the  air  of  a 
man  whose  day's  work  was  done.  The  squaws  flung  down 
the  load  from  the  burdened  horses,  and  vast  piles  of  meat 
and  hides  were  soon  gathered  before  the  door  of  every  lodge. 
By  this  time  it  was  darkening  fast,  and  the  whole  village  was 
illumined  by  the  glare  of  fires.  All  the  squaws  and  children 
were  gathered  about  the  piles  of  meat,  exploring  them  for 
the  daintiest  portion. 

An  intimate,  most  trying,  often  sickening  inside 
view  of  savage  life  and  character  which  was  after 
ward  of  incalculable  service  to  him.  Thus,  in  the 
outset,  you  must  understand  that  your  historian  is 
personally  familiar  with  his  ground ;  that  besides 
collecting  material  from  foreign  archives,  from 
French  manuscripts,  documents  and  letters  hith 
erto  inaccessible,  from  every  possible  quarter,  he 
has  journeyed  through  forests,  been  up  and  down 
the  great  rivers,  along  the  lakes,  visited  the  fields 
where  battles  were  fought,  examined  the  ruins  of 
forts  and  old  defences,  taken  note  of  the  scenery 
and  vegetable  growths,  and  traversed  what  were 
once  trails  through  the  wilderness.  He  says : 


FRANCIS    PARKMAN.  191 

I  have  visited  and  examined  every  spot  where  events  of 
any  importance  in  connection  with  the  contest  took  place, 
and  have  observed  with  attention  such  scenes  and  persons 
as  might  help  to  illustrate  those  I  meant  to  describe.  In 
short,  the  subject  has  been  studied  as  much  from  life  and  in 
the  open  air  as  at  the  library  table. 

And  now  let  me  emphasize  the  importance  of 
this  magnificent  work  by  reminding  you  that  while 
so  much  interest  is  connected  with  the  War  of  the 
Revolution  and  the  late  War  of  the  Rebellion,  there 
was  danger  that  the  momentous  consequences  in 
volved  in  that  earlier,  great  struggle  between  the 
French  and  English  might  be  almost  lost  sight  of. 

The  general  title  is  "France  and  England  in 
North  America.  A  series  of  historical  narratives." 
The  time  covered  is  from  1512  (the  discovery  of 
Florida)  to  the  fall  of  Canada,  in  1760,  with  a  sup 
plementary  chapter  or  two  relative  to  the  treaty 
and  results.  The  scenes,  personages,  accessories 
and  events  during  this  period  of  about  two  hun 
dred  and  fifty  years  are  wonderfully  varied  and 
dramatic.  The  chief  actors  are  French  noblemen 
fresh  from  the  most  polished  court  in  Europe,  offi 
cers  victorious  in  famous  European  campaigns, 


192      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

explorers,  Jesuit  fathers,  trappers,  guides,  half- 
breeds,  Indian  warriors,  and  in  the  ancient  regime, 
nuns,  high-born  ladies  and  peasant  girls.  The 
region  is  romantic,  taking  in  the  coast  at  Mount 
Desert,  and  that  wild  stretch  along  the  St.  Law 
rence  and  the  chain  of  great  lakes  to  the  far 
Northwest,  the  Mississippi  river  and  the  fateful 
lagoons  at  its  mouth. 

It  has  the  Acadia  of  the  people  of  Evangeline, 
Quebec  with  its  heights  and  historic  "  Plain,"  Mon 
treal  and  the  convent  whose  walls  were  reared  dur 
ing  the  reign  of  that  regime,  Lake  George,  Cham- 
plain,  Ticonderoga,  the  forts  where  diabolic  savage* 
wreaked  their  vengeance,  trading-posts,  lonely  mis 
sions  in  the  wilderness.  The  scenes  shift,  and  suc 
ceed  one  another  like  those  in  some  long  panorama; 
now  a  pageant  or  a  religious  ceremonial,  now  an 
ambuscade  or  a  war-dance.  Dramatic  in  the  highest 
degree,  it  was  life  lived  rapidly  and  insecurely,  al 
ternating  from  festivity  to  carnage  ;  a  time  of  splen 
did  success  and  one  of  downfall,  of  glory,  of  triumph 
and  of  dire  misfortune.  Nowhere  else  on  this  con 
tinent  have  been  such  varied  and  stirring  events. 


FRANCIS    PARKMAN.  193 

Part  I.  is  Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New  World, 
and  the  author  introduces  it  by  saying : 

The  springs  of  American  civilization,  unlike  those  of  the 
older  world,  lie  revealed  in  the  clear  light  of  History. 

He  says  it  was  Feudalism,  Monarchy  and  Rome 
—  "a  gigantic  ambition  striving  to  master  a  con 
tinent" —  which  sent  those  foreign  expeditions  to 
our  shore,  and  that  "the  story  of  New  France 
opens  with  a  tragedy,  in  the  wilds  of  Florida." 
The  first  division  of  Part  I.  is  "  Huguenots  in  Flor 
ida,"  and  while  reading  it  it  is  worth  while  to  take 
up  the  chapters  in  the  first  volume  of  Bancroft's 
History  of  the  United  States  which  treat  of  the 
same  subject,  and  also  to  give  careful  attention 
to  a  recent  volume  by  Charles  B.  Reynolds,  entitled 
Old  Saint  Augustine.  The  second  division  is  "  Sam 
uel  de  Champlain,"  a  far  more  agreeable  topic, 
and  a  kind  of  adventurer  more  worthy  than  many 
who  appear  in  those  pages.  Here  is  an  account 
of  an  Ottawa  village  as  his  exploring  party  saw  it ; 
they  were  the  first  white  men  the  Indians  had  seen  : 

Here  was  a  rough  clearing.  The  trees  had  been  burned  ; 
there  was  a  rude  and  desolate  gap  in  the  sombre  green  of 


194      PLEASANT    AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

the  pine  forest.  Dead  trunks,  blasted  and  black  with  fire, 
stood  grimly  upright  amid  the  charred  stumps  and  prostrate 
bodies  of  fallen  comrades  half  consumed.  In  the  interven 
ing  spaces  the  soil  had  been  feebly  scratched  with  hoes  of 
wood  or  bone,  and  a  crop  of  maize  was  growing,  now  some 
four  inches  high.  The  dwellings  of  these  slovenly  farmers, 
framed  of  poles  covered  with  sheets  of  bark,  were  scattered 
here  and  there,  singly  or  in  groups,  while  their  tenants  were 
running  to  the  shore  in  amazement.  Warriors  stood  with 
their  hands  over  their  mouths  —  the  usual  attitude  of  aston 
ishment  ;  squaws  stared  between  curiosity  and  fear ;  and 
naked  pappooses  screamed  and  ran. 

This  was  the  first  intrusion  upon  wigwams  in 
the  "  forest  primeval,"  and  here  the  red  man  as  he 
was,  the  aboriginal  inhabitant,  the  North  American 
Indian  who  was  to  play  so  important  a  part  in 
coming  events. 

Part  II.  is  The  Jesuits  in  North  America,  and  is  a 
history  of  the  efforts,  perseverance,  zeal  and  hard 
ships  of  the  priests  in  establishing  Missions  among 
the  Indians.  No  annals  afford  a  picture  of  more 
sublime  patience  and  self-sacrifice  than  the  lives 
of  those  men,  who  were  more  than  ready  to  shut 
themselves  off  in  the  heart  of  the  wilderness,  to  be 
massacred,  burnt  at  the  stake,  by  their  savage  as- 


FRANCIS    PARKMAN.  195 

sociates,  and  perish  there  alone,  as  was  the  fate  of 
many. 

But  their  religious  enthusiasm  had  results  com 
mensurate  with  their  heroism,  and  its  influence 
was  of  weight  in  founding  Montreal  and  determin 
ing  the  site  of  towns  which  perpetuate  their  names 
to  this  day. 

Part  III.,  La  Salle  and  the  Discovery  of  the  Great 
West,  you  will  find  one  of  the  most  captivating  of 
the  series.  A  biography  of  one  of  the  most  daring 
of  all  the  explorers  in  an  age  of  daring  men  ;  one 
whom  no  perils  could  daunt,  a  man  of  unconquer 
able  mind  "in  a  frame  of  iron"  —  that  educated 
young  French  gentleman  who  came  over  to  Can 
ada  at  twenty-two  to  seek  his  fortune,  learned 
seven  or  eight  Indian  languages  and  dialects,  and 
with  his  imagination  on  fire  to  find  a  new  passage 
to  the  South  Sea  by  way  of  the  Ohio  and  Missis 
sippi,  lent  his  life  to  "  exploring  the  mystery  of  the 
great  unknown  river  of  the  West."  Of  the  perils 
and  tragic  experiences  through  the  years  that  fol 
lowed,  through  wintry  forests,  beset  by  savage 
hordes,  we  have  his  own  words  : 


196      PLEASANT   AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

Often  without  food ;  watch  by  night  and  march  by  day, 
loaded  with  baggage,  such  as  blanket,  clothing,  kettle, 
hatchet,  gun,  powder,  lead,  and  skins  to  make  moccasins; 
sometimes  pushing  through  thickets,  sometimes  climbing 
rocks  covered  with  snow,  sometimes  wading  whole  days 
through  marshes  where  the  water  was  waist-deep  or  even 
more,  at  a  season  when  the  snow  was  not  entirely  melted. 

Again,  when  snow  kept  on  falling  for  nineteen 
days  in  succession,  he  says : 

We  were  obliged  to  cross  forty  leagues  of  open  country, 
where  we  could  hardly  find  wood  to  warm  ourselves  at  even 
ing,  and  could  get  no  bark  whatever  to  make  a  hut,  so  that 
we  had  to  spend  the  night  exposed  to  the  furious  winds  that 
blow  over  those  plains. 

Through  regions  where  there  had  been  Indian 
fights,  and  sights  most  sickening  after  that  "  hyena 
warfare  "  met  their  sight ;  losing  vessels  and  boats ; 
encountering  the  murderous  savages ;  amidst  plun 
derers  and  mutineers ;  subject  to  every  hindrance 
conceivable  —  to  understand  all  this,  you  must  read 
this  strangely  fascinating  but  saddening  volume 
which  closes  with  loss  and  disappointment,  with 
tragedy,  and  the  assassination  of  the  brave  leader 
at  forty-four. 


FRANCIS   PARKMAN.  197 

Part  IV.,  The  Old  Regime  in  Canada,  is  a  more 
peaceful  division  treating  of  the  mode  of  life  in 
Montreal  and  other  settlements,  the  arrival  of  the 
emigrant  girls  from  France,  the  establishment  of 
the  Sisterhoods  still  existing  in  that  quaint  Cana 
dian  city,  building,  mission  work,  intrigues,  dissen 
sions,  the  rude  conditions  of  a  new  colony  with  a 
promiscuous  population. 

Part  V.,  Count  Frontenac  and  New  France  under 
Louis  XIV.,  gives  the  history  of  "  the  most  remark 
able  man  who  ever  represented  the  crown  of  France 
in  the  New  World,"  and  the  beginning  of  the  trou 
bles  between  the  French  and  the  English  colonies 
which  grew  into  that  long  and  bloody  contest, 
during  which  bands  of  Indian  allies  swept  down 
through  the  wilderness  upon  our  defenceless  set 
tlements,  and  along  our  northern  frontiers  there 
was  an  unbroken  reign  of  terror.  It  is  in  this  part 
(Chapter  XVI.)  that  you  come  upon  the  Acadians 
of  whom  you  are  to  know  more  by  and  by. 

As  was  said  in  the  beginning,  there  is  a  vacancy 
in  the  series,  which  leaves  us  to  pass  on  to  the 
grand  culmination  in  Part  VII.,  Montcalm  and 


198      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

Wolfe,  one  of  the  finest  pieces  of  historical  writing 
in  our  language.  In  this  the  author  has  surpassed 
all  the  preceding  volumes.  In  the  Introduction 
he  says : 

The  most  momentous  and  far-reaching  question  ever 
brought  to  issue  on  this  continent  was :  Shall  France 
remain  here,  or  shall  she  not  ? 

This  work  tells  why  and  how  French  dominion 
was  overthrown  ;  and  first,  with  clearness  of  state 
ment  that  a  child  could  understand,  shows  the 
situation,  what  France  claimed,  and  what  she 
actually  held ;  then  the  position  and  conditions  of 
the  thirteen  British  colonies  at  the  period  dating 
1745  ;  then  the  struggles  between  the  French  and 
English  for  trading-posts :  and  here  at  one  of  the 
French  forts  commanded  by  Saint  Pierre,  we  meet, 
in  the  autumn  of  1753,  George  Washington : 

The  surrounding  forests  had  dropped  their  leaves,  and  in 
gray  and  patient  desolation  bided  the  coming  winter.  Chill 
rains  drizzled  over  the  gloomy  "  clearing,"  and  drenched  the 
palisades  and  log-built  barracks,  raw  from  the  axe.  Buried 
in  the  wilderness,  the  military  exiles  resigned  themselves  as 
they  might  to  months  of  monotonous  solitude,  when,  just 
after  sunset  on  the  eleventh  of  December,  a  tall  youth  came 


FRANCIS   PARKMAN.  199 

out  of  the  forest  on  horseback,  attended  by  a  companion 
much  older  and  rougher  than  himself,  and  followed  by  sev 
eral  Indians  and  four  or  five  white  men  with  pack  horses. 
Officers  from  the  fort  went  out  to  meet  the  strangers ;  and 
wading  through  mud  and  sodden  snow,  they  entered  at  the 
gate.  On  the  next  day  the  young  leader  of  the  party,  with 
the  help  of  an  interpreter,  for  he  spoke  no  French,  had  an 
interview  with  the  commandant,  and  gave  him  a  letter 
from  Governor  Dinwiddie.  Saint  Pierre  and  the  officer 
next  in  rank,  who  knew  a  little  English,  took  it  to  another 
room,  to  study  it  at  their  ease ;  and  in  it,  all  unconsciously, 
they  read  a  name  destined  to  stand  one  of  the  noblest  in  the 
annals  of  mankind  ;  for  it  introduced  Major  George  Wash 
ington,  Adjutant  General  of  the  Virginia  militia. 

I  have  quoted  that  passage  for  a  twofold  pur 
pose,  one  of  which  is  to  show  you  the  unsurpassed 
clearness  and  picturesque  beauty  of  this  author's 
style.  In  the  whole  paragraph  it  hardly  would  be 
possible  to  change  a  word,  or  the  position  of  a 
word,  without  damage.  It  is  a  style  wonderful  in 
its  simplicity  and  purity,  its  directness  and  vigor, 
its  pictorial  charm.  You  will  find  it  everywhere. 
In  no  historical  writings  will  you  have  the  reality 
of  events  more  vividly  brought  before  you;  the 
author  had  the  power  of  identifying  himself  with 
them,  as  if  he  had  traversed  the  swamps  with  La 


200      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

Salle,  and  lived  in  the  bark-roofed  cabin  with  the 
priest ;  as  if  he  had  been  an  eye-witness  of  Brad- 
dock's  defeat.  When  you  read  that  bloody  story 
in  Chapter  VII.  you  will  feel  as  if  you  yourself  had 
been  a  looker-on. 

In  this  part,  you  have  the  true  story  of  the  Aca- 
dians  (different  from  that  in  Evangtline) ;  you 
see  of  what  rude  elements  the  Provincial  army  was 
made ;  you  meet  John  Stark  and  Rogers  "  the 
Ranger ; "  you  feel  afresh  the  horrors  of  the  sav 
age  raids ;  you  live  in  terror  of  ambuscades ;  you 
wait  in  suspense  to  learn  the  fate  of  the  frontier 
forts  and  their  brave  defenders.  Last  of  all  these 
intensely  dramatic  scenes,  you  witness  the  desper 
ate  attempts  to  gain  the  Heights  of  Quebec,  you 
see  the  plateau  of  grass  patched  with  corn  fields, 
the  Plains  of  Abraham,  where  the  long,  long  strug 
gle  between  England  and  France  for  American 
dominion  came  to  its  final  issue,  where  Wolfe  fell 
and  Montcalm  received  his  death-shot. 

Our  author  loves  a  hero ;  he  delights  to  portray 
a  character ;  to  picture  the  man,  bringing  him  out 
of  the  past  and  making  him  alive  before  us.  He 


FRANCIS   PARKMAN.  2OI 

has  done  this  for  the  two  brave  officers  who  gave 
the  title  to  this,  his  crowning  work. 

He  has  done  it,  too,  for  an  Indian  chief,  who  is 
the  subject  of  another  volume,  which,  though  stand 
ing  independently  and  written  earlier  than  the 
others  may  be  said  to  belong  here —  The  Conspiracy 
of  Pontiac.  Though  small  space  remains,  let  me 
say  that  the  introductory  part  is  a  careful  account 
of  the  social  institutions  and  habits,  and  the  tribal 
relations  of  the  North  American  Indians.  Prob 
ably  in  no  one  volume  will  you  find  so  much,  put 
in  so  concise  and  attractive  shape  —  their  order  of 
tribes,  councils,  plan  of  government,  what  the  totem 
meant,  their  ancient  transmitted  customs  which 
took  the  place  of  laws. 

The  main  theme  is  the  gathering  of  all  the  In 
dians  into  one  great  confederacy  to  strike  for  their 
lost  territory ;  and  the  aspect  of  the  country  when 
this  is  about  to  take  place  is  sketched  —  the  lone 
liness,  the  scattered  Indian  villages ;  even  in  the 
most  populous  portion  "one  might  sometimes 
journey  for  days  together  through  the  twilight 
forest  and  meet  no  human  form;"  the  English 


202       PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG   FOLKS. 

settlements  lay  "  like  a  narrow  strip  between  the 
wilderness  and  the  sea,"  with  places  of  rendezvous 
and  outposts. 

Pontiac,  at  the  head  of  the  confederacy,  a  man 
of  remarkable  foresight  and  power  over  his  people, 
enters  upon  the  scene  at  about  fifty,  in  1760,  when 
Rogers  the  Ranger  with  his  men  was  sent  to  the 
western  forts  to  take  possession  in  the  name  of  His 
Britanic  Majesty.  Pontiac,  who  had  been  an  ally 
of  the  French,  demands  to  know  why  they  are  there. 

Soon  begins  the  murderous  strife,  which  means 
attack  upon  the  forts,  stratagems,  ambuscades, 
every  diabolic  measure  that  savages  could  resort 
to  —  it  is  a  bloody,  a  curdling  story,  of  which  we 
have  details  even  to  the  preparation  where  the 
Indians  put  on  the  war-paint.  Through  it  all,  we 
cannot  help  sharing  the  author's  admiration  for 
the  man  whom  he  calls  "the  greatest  Indian  on 
the  American  continent."  Pontiac  was  assassin 
ated  by  a  strolling  Indian,  but,  says  the  historian, 

whole  tribes  were  rooted  out  to  expiate  it  ...  over  the 
grave  of  Pontiac  more  blood  was  poured  out  in  atonement 
than  flowed  from  the  hecatomb  of  slaughtered  heroes  on  the 


FRANCIS    PARKMAN.  203 

corpse  of  Patroclus.  .  .  .  Neither  mound  nor  tablet 
marked  the  burial  place  of  Pontiac.  For  a  mausoleum,  a 
city  [St.  Louis]  has  risen  above  the  forest  hero,  and  the  race 
whom  he  hated  with  such  burning  rancor  trample  with  un 
ceasing  footsteps  over  his  forgotten  grave. 

I  hope  I  have  been  able  to  indicate  to  you  that 
vast  pleasure  and  profit  await  you  in  reading  the 
works  of  this  historian,  and  that  you  will  be 
tempted  to  avail  yourself  of  the  whole  series. 
Great  enjoyment  is  before  you. 

Francis  Parkman  was  born  in  Boston,  September 
1 6,  1823,  and  in  these  later  years  his  time  is 
chiefly  spent  there  and  at  his  summer  home  a  few 
miles  out,  by  Jamaica  Pond,  where  he  indulges 
himself  in  his  favorite  pastime  of  horticulture,  and 
may  be  found  of  a  summer  day  at  work  among  his 
beloved  roses  and  lilies  —  you  will  notice  how  flow 
ers  bloom  along  the  pages  of  his  books — of  which 
he  is  so  fond  and  for  the  cultivation  of  which  he  is 
so  distinguished  that  he  has  written  a  "  Book  of 
Roses,"  and  had  a  lily  named  for  him,  Liliunt 
Parkmanni. 


NOTE.  —  His   books  are  Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New 
World,  The  Jesuits  in  North  America,  La  Salle  and  the  Dis- 


204      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 


covery  of  the  Great  West,  The  Old  Regime  in  Canada,  Count 
Frontenac  and  New  France  under  Louis  XIV.,  Montcalm  and 
Wolfe,  The  Oregon  Trail,  The  Conspiracy  of  Pontiac.  He 
has  lately  prepared  a  Historic  Handbook  of  the  Northern 
Tour.  A  short  sketch  of  his  life  may  be  found  in  The  Critic 
of  February  27,  1886.  In  connection  with  the  Acadian  epi 
sode  you  will  find  it  of  interest  to  read  Evangeline  ;  and 
Hiawatha,  and  the  Algonquin  Legends  of  Charles  G.  Leland 
may  afford  help  in  understanding  Indian  customs  and  tradi 
tions.  It  is  also  well  to  read  what  Bancroft  says  upon  these 
topics. 


GEORGE   WILLIAM    CURTIS. 


XL 


GEORGE   WILLIAM   CURTIS. 

INFINITE  variety  goes  to  the  making  of  litera 
ture,  and  we  would  not  have  it  otherwise  if 
we  could.  We  do  not  want  all,  or  much,  to  be 
of  the  sledge-hammer  style  of  Carlyle ;  we  weary  of 
the  ponderous  sentences  of  Dr.  Johnson,  even  of 
the  elegant  finish  of  Addison.  It  would  not  be 
satisfactory  to  have  all  writers  rambling  and  remi 
niscent  like  De  Quincey  and  Ruskin,  notwithstand 
ing  their  wondrous  affluence  of  words,  their  sug- 
gestiveness,  their  picturesqueness  and-charm.  We 
tire  too  much  of  the  stately  and  statuesque,  of  the 
too  highly  elaborated,  of  the  abrupt  and  brusque, 
of  too  much  piquancy  or  too  much  dash. 

We  must  not  read  history  only,  or  biography, 
or  dry  essays  on  vital  subjects  to  the  exclusion  of 
everything  else.     What  would  life   be  with  the 
207 


208     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

poetry  eliminated  from  it  ?  Let  us  have  our  ideals, 
only  they  must  be  high  ones  ;  let  us  sometimes  — 
not  too  often  —  dream  dreams,  even  as  the  old 
book-keeper  did  in  Prue  and  I,  provided  they 
make  us  gentler,  tenderer,  purer,  kindlier. 

Take  away  from  literature  the  poetic  and  imagi 
native  part,  and  what  a  dreary  residue  it  would  be  ! 
Take  away  the  beings  who  have  had  no  existence 
but  in  the  author's  brain,  and  what  wide,  what 
awfully  wide  gaps  there  would  be  !  The  favorites 
of  your  childhood  would  be  the  first  to  go.  You 
would  lose  your  fairy  princes  and  princesses,  Cin 
derella,  and  the  Mother  Goose  people  of  your  ear 
liest  remembrance.  As  with  the  waving  of  a  con 
jurer's  wand,  away,  away  they  go  ;  as  swiftly  and 
as  noiselessly  as  the  fairies  who  had  been  dancing 
on  the  sands  by  moonlight,  in  Allston's  lovely 
sketch.  Robinson  Crusoe  would  go ;  and  the 
Pilgrim  to  the  Celestial  City  and  all  he  had  to  do 
with.  Prospero  and  Ariel  would  be  no  more  ; 
Oberon  and  Titania  and  Robin  Good-fellow  would 
be  spirited  away. 

Are  you  acquainted  with  the  "  Howadji  ?  "     Do 


GEORGE   WILLIAM    CURTIS.  209 

you  know  "  Prue  "  and  the  book-keeper  ?  Have 
you  ever  mused  over  the  unfortunate  possession 
Titbottom  had  in  his  magic  spectacles  ?  —  spec 
tacles  with  the  power  of  magic  that  was  malign, 
not  beneficent.  If  so,  you  know  the  quality  of 
this  author's  prose,  unlike  anything  you  have  yet 
had  brought  before  you.  There  is  always  the 
same  individual  imprint  in  whatever  his  pen 
touches.  You  see  it  month  by  month,  in  the  Easy 
Chair  of  Harper's  Monthly  —  a  little  dreamy,  full 
of  memories  with  a  flavor  of  pensiveness  that  you 
are  conscious  of,  as  you  are  of  a  delicate  perfume. 
In  the  perfection  of  finish,  the  elegance  and  re 
finement  of  language,  there  is  a  hint  of  Irving ; 
and  there  is  a  something,  not  easily  defined,  which 
is  a  reminder  of  Charles  Lamb.  And  yet,  Curtis 
is  like  neither. 

If  you  would  know  for  yourself  just  what  it  is 
that  I  find  such  difficulty  in  defining,  put  yourself 
under  the  spell,  and  read  Prue  and  /,  one  of  the 
most  engaging  of  modern  classics,  a  little  volume 
made  up  of  seven  short  sketches.  What  makes 
the  charm  ?  There  is  no  story,  no  grand  march 


210      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

of  syllables,  no  incisive  statement,  no  crystallized 
thought  to  compel  your  attention.  Yes  ;  where 
lies  the  charm?  You  have  it  the  same  in  the 
Howadji  books  of  travel. 

It  is  the  daintiest  of  poetic  prose.  It  is  not  the 
bread  of  life,  but  a  choice  conserve.  You  do  not 
care  to  have  all  quince  or  all  pine-apple,  but  when 
you  spread  your  table  you  would  not  forego  the 
exquisite  aroma  and  the  delicious  flavor  which 
give  zest  to  your  banquet.  When  you  have  our 
author  for  your  guide  you  find  yourself  in  the 
realm  of  fancy,  and  for  the  time  being  you  walk 
in  the  glamour  that  it  casts  over  common  things. 
Too  much  of  such  prose  would  be  enervating,  like 
soft  airs,  floating  clouds,  the  fragrance  of  flowers, 
the  calm  of  summer  seas.  You  do  not  find  here 
the  sinews  and  thews,  the  brawn  and  muscle  of 
literature,  but  another  and  essential  part,  refine 
ment,  elegance,  delicacy,  quiet  humor,  something 
subtle  and  evasive ;  what  odor  is  to  the  tuberose, 
what  poetry  is  to  language. 

It  is  an  ineffably  lovely  quality  of  the  imagina 
tion  which  conjures  up  pictures,  like  that  in  Elia's 


GEORGE   WILLIAM    CURTIS.  211 

"Dream  Children,"  in  the  seven  sketches  men 
tioned.  See  how  the  gray-haired  book-keeper  in 
dulges  his  fancies  about  his  Spanish  castles,  in 
"  My  Chateaux  " : 

My  finest  castles  are  in  Spain.  It  is  a  country  famously 
romantic,  and  my  castles  are  all  of  perfect  proportions  and 
appropriately  set  in  the  most  picturesque  situations.  I  have 
never  been  to  Spain  myself,  but  I  have  naturally  conversed 
much  with  travellers  to  that  country.  .  .  .  The  wisest  of 
them  told  me  that  there  were  more  holders  of  real.estate  in 
Spain  than  in  any  region  he  had  ever  heard  of,  and  they  are 
all  great  proprietors.  Every  one  of  them  possesses  a  mul 
titude  of  the  stateliest  castles.  .  .  .  It  is  not  easy  to  say 
how  I  know  so  much,  as  I  certainly  do  about  my  castles  in 
Spain.  The  sun  always  shines  upon  them.  They  stand 
lofty  and  fair  in  a  luminous,  golden  atmosphere,  a  little  hazy 
and  dreamy  perhaps,  like  the  Indian  summer.  .  .  .  All 
the  sublime  mountains,  and  beautiful  valleys,  and  soft  land- 
scapes  that  I  have  not  yet  seen  are  to  be  found  in  the 
grounds.  .  .  .  From  the  windows  of  those  castles  look 
the  beautiful  women  whom  I  have  never  seen,  whose  por 
traits  the  poets  have  painted.  .  .  .  The  lights  that  never 
shone  glance  at  evening  in  the  vaulted  halls  upon  banquets 
that  were  never  spread. 

How  delightful  it  would  be  if  you  could  read  in 


212      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

connection  with  this  some  of  the  poems  in  verse 
(for  this,  you  know,  is  a  poem  in  prose)  where  a 
similar  fancy  has  taken  form  in  words.  Thus, 
Mrs.  Browning  called  hers  "The  House  of 
Clouds ; "  Tennyson  dreamed  of  "  The  Lotos- 
Eaters,"  and  "  The  Palace  of  Art ;  "  and  in  the 
poems  of  a  writer  on  this  side  the  ocean,  "  A.  W. 
H."  (Rose  Terry  Cooke),  you  will  find  a  veritable 
Spanish  Chateau,  entitled  "  En  Espagne,"  in  per 
fect  verse,  beginning : 

I  built  a  palace  white  and  high 
With  gold  and  purple  tapestried. 

No  dusty  highway  ran  thereby, 
But  guarded  alleys  to  it  led 
And  shaven  lawns  about  were  spread 

Where  bee  and  moth  danced  daintily. 

The  old  book-keeper  of  Curtis  has  the  vision  and 
the  faculty  divine  ;  he  does  not  need  to  leave  the 
room  to  see  the  world,  for  he  says  : 

An  orange  takes  me  to  Sorrento,  and  roses  when  they 
blow  to  Paestum.  The  camelias  in  Aurelia's  hair  bring 
Brazil  into  the  happy  room  she  treads.  .  .  .  The  pearls 
upon  her  neck  make  me  free  of  the  Persian  Gulf.  Upon  her 


GEORGE   WILLIAM    CURTIS.  213 

shawl,  like  the  Arabian  prince  upon  his  carpet,  I  am  trans 
ported  to  the  valley  of  Cashmere,  and  thus  as  I  daily  walk 
in  the  bright  spring  days,  I  go  round  the  world. 

He  can  sit  upon  the  shore,  and  see  in  one  ship 
Cleopatra's  galley,  Columbus'  Santa  Maria,  the 
Bucentaur  of  the  Adriatic,  the  Spanish  Armada, 
the  May  Flower,  and  all  the  famous  ships  of  his 
tory,  tradition  and  song.  In  "  Sea  from  Shore  " 
he  lets  the  vessel  from  India  take  him  far  away. 
He  says  of  his  own  resources : 

For  those  of  us  whom  Nature  means  to  keep  at  home  she 
provides  entertainment.  One  man  goes  four  thousand 
miles  to  see  Italy,  and  does  not  see  it,  he  is  so  short-sighted. 
Another  is  so  far-sighted  that  he  stays  in  his  room  and  sees 
more  than  Italy : 

which  is  his  poetical  way  of  telling  us  what  writers 
before  and  since  have  said,  and  which  you  will 
apprehend  for  yourselves,  if  you  are  true  observ 
ers,  that  the  eye  sees  only  what  it  has  in  itself  the 
power  of  seeing,  but  having  power,  sees  wonder 
ful  and  precious  things  hidden  from  other  eyes 
that  have  it  not. 

The   seven  sketches  referred  to  are  "  Dinner 


214      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

Time,"  "  My  Chateaux,"  "  Sea  from  Shore,"  "  Tit- 
bottom's  Spectacles,"  "  A  Cruise  in  the  Flying 
Dutchman,"  "  Family  Portraits,"  "  Our  Cousin 
the  Curate ;  "  and  if  you  fail  to  appreciate  their 
beauty  it  is  because  your  taste  is  not  educated. 
Curtis's  one  novel  Trumps  you  will  perhaps  better 
like,  written  to  show  up  the  folly,  shame  and 
wickedness  of  society,  after  the  Thackeray  man 
ner,  with  a  spice  of  sarcasm,  pungent  and  biting. 
There  is  a  sweet,  true,  pure  girl  for  a  heroine, 
Hope  Wayne,  the  primness  of  whose  bringing  up 
is  intimated  thus : 

So  Hope  as  a  child  had  played  with  little  girls  who  were 
invited  to  Pinewood  —  select  little  girls,  who  came  in  the 
prettiest  frocks  and  behaved  in  the  prettiest  way,  superin 
tended  by  nurses  and  ladies  maids.  They  tended  their 
dolls  •  peaceably  in  the  nursery ;  they  played  clean  little 
games  upon  the  lawn.  .  .  .  They  were  not  chattery 
French  nurses  who  presided  over  these  solemnities ;  they 
were  grave,  housekeeping,  Mrs.  Simcoe-kind  of  people.  Julia 
and  Mary  were  exhorted  to  behave  themselves  like  little 
ladies,  and  the  frolic  ended  by  their  all  taking  books  from 
the  library  shelves  and  settling  properly  in  a  large  chair,  or 
on  the  sofa,  or  even  upon  the  piazza  if  it  had  been  nicely 


GEORGE   WILLIAM    CURTIS.  215 

dusted  and  inspected  until  the  setting  sun  sent  them  away 
with  the  calmest  kisses  at  parting. 

It  was  in  the  days  of  a  genuine  old-time  min 
ister,  who  wore 

a  silken  gown  in  summer,  and  a  woolen  gown  in  winter, 
and  black  worsted  gloves,  always  with  the  middle  finger  of 
the  right-hand  glove  slit  that  he  might  more  conveniently 
turn  the  leaves  of  the  Bible,  and  the  hymn-book,  and  his 
own  sermons. 

And  it  looks  at  first  as  if  we  were  going  to  have 
a  book  of  the  country  life  of  Curtis's  own  youth 
in  a  rural  town  in  Massachusetts,  but  New  York 
city  soon  draws  in  the  characters,  and  it  ends  in 
a  whirlpool  of  fashion  and  folly,  amidst  which 
the  face  of  Hope  Wayne  shines  out  serene  and 
unspoiled,  sweet  and  lovable  to  the  end.  There 
is  a  dreadful  Aunt  Dagon  (who  ought  to  have 
been  Dragon),  and  upstart  people  who  have  noth 
ing  but  money  —  the  Dinkses  and  Newts  and  Van 
Boosenbergs  and  their  kind. 

In  that  novel  you  have  a  vivid  description  of 
the  wonderful  boy-preacher,  Summerfield,  who 


2l6      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

magnetized  the  people,  so  that  one  of  his  hearers 
said: 

I  have  been  into  the  old  John  Strut  meeting-house  when 
the  crowds  hung  out  of  the  windows  and  doors  like  swarm 
ing  bees  clustered  upon  a  hive.  He  swayed  them  as  wind 
bends  a  grain  field. 

Somewhat  in  contrast  to  this  boy  with  the  sweet 
blue  eyes,  and  "  face  of  earnest  expression  and  a 
kind  of  fairy  sweetness,"  comes  a  fine  account  of 
Dr.  Channing,  whose  style  and  influence  were  evi 
dently  not  without  potence  over  Curtis,  whose 
belief  is  of  the  Channing  order.  Read  it,  that 
you  may  know  just  what  was  the  presence  and 
manner  of  that  distinguished  New  England  di 
vine  of  rarely  fine  qualities  and  saintly  life  : 

In  a  few  minutes  a  slight  man,  wrapped  in  a  black  silk 
gown  slowly  ascended  the  pulpit  stairs,  and  before  seating 
himself  stood  for  a  moment  looking  down  at  the  congrega 
tion.  His  face  was  small  and  thin  and  pale,  but  there  was 
a  pure  light,  an  earnest  spiritual  sweetness  in  the  eyes  —  the 
irradiation  of  an  anxious  soul.  .  .  .  A  natural  manly  can 
dor  certified  the  truth  of  every  word  he  spoke.  ...  As  he 
warmed  in  his  discourse  a  kind  of  celestial  grace  glimmered 
about  his  person,  and  his  pale,  thoughtful  face  kindled  and 


GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS.  217 

beamed  with  holy  light.  His  sentences  were  entirely  simple. 
.  .  .  The  people  sat  as  if  they  were  listening  to  a  dis 
embodied  soul. 

You  will  remember  that  in  The  Minister's  Woo 
ing  of  Mrs.  Stowe  you  have  a  powerful  portraiture 
of  another  New  England  clergyman  of  former 
days,  and  that  to  the  novelist  we  often  owe  some 
of  the  best  pictures  of  actual  people  that  we  find 
anywhere  in  print. 

Another  book  by  Curtis  which  had  great  popu 
larity,  showing  up  the  hollowness  and  snobbish 
ness  of  New  York  society,  after  the  same  Thack 
eray  manner,  was  The  Potiphar  Papers ;  but  those 
of  his  writings  of  greatest  interest  to  you  are 
the  books  of  travel,  the  Nile  Notes  of  a  How- 
adji,  and  The  Howadji  in  Syria.  Romantic  yet 
realistic,  steeped  in  the  poetry  and  glow  of  the 
orient,  each  volume  of  his  Eastern  experiences 
has  the  same  luxuriance  of  language,  while  giving 
at  the  same  time  a  more  satisfactory  impression  of 
the  scenes  and  places  than  columns  of  matter- 
of-fact  description  would  do.  They  are  summer 
books,  to  dream  over,  under  the  trees,  in  the 


2l8       PLEASANT   AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

hammock,  on  the  veranda.  Different  books  are 
for  different  times  and  seasons  and  places.  Some 
are  to  be  read  when  snow-bound,  in  a  cosey  corner 
by  the  evening  lamp;  some  are  for  odd  hours, 
left  to  lie  about  on  the  window  seat  and  taken  up 
by  snatches,  like  Leigh  Hunt's;  some  are  for 
travelling  companions,  but  the  Howadji  books  are 
for  summer  days.  Esthetic,  leisurely,  strangely 
fascinating,  and  potent  over  the  young  imagina 
tion.  There  is  a  golden  haze  about  them,  and 
yet  through  it  we  see  distinctly  what  he  said,  and 
in  a  light  we  can  never  forget.  Here  are  bits  from 
what  he  says  about  his  first  sight  of  Jerusalem : 

I  passed  rapidly  over  this  lofty,  breezy  table-land  with  an  in 
conceivable  ardor  of  expectation.  ...  As  I  paced  more 
slowly  along  the  hills,  the  words  of  the  psalm  suddenly 
rang  through  my  mind,  like  a  sublime  organ  peal  through  a 
hushed  cathedral.  "  Beautiful  for  situation,  the  joy  of  the 
whole  earth  is  Mount  Zion,  on  the  sides  of  the  North,  the  city 
of  the  Great  King."  .  .  .  The  high  land  unrolled  itself 
more  broadly.  The  breezy  morning  died  into  silent  noon. 
.  .  .  There  was  a  low  line  of  wall,  a  minaret,  a  black  dome, 
a  few  flat  roofs,  and  in  the  midst  a  group  of  dark,  slender 
cypresses,  and  olives  and  palms.  There  lay  Jerusalem  dead 


GEORGE   WILLIAM    CURTIS.  2 19 

in  the  white  noon.  The  desolation  of  the  wilderness 
moaned  at  her  gates.  There  was  no  suburb  of  trees  or 
houses.  She  lay  upon  a  high  hill  in  the  midst  of  hills  bar 
ren  as  those  we  had  passed.  There  were  no  sights  or 
sounds  of  life.  The  light  was  colorless,  the  air  was  still. 
Nature  had  swooned  around  the  dead  city.  There  was  no 
sound  in  the  air;  but  a  wailing  in  my  heart 

When  he  was  in  Nazareth  the  music  of  the  con 
vent  bells  brought  up  that  New  England  town 
which  was  Hope  Wayne's  home,  and  here  follows 
an  autobiographic  passage  which  perfectly  repre 
sents  both  the  style  and  the  meditative  spirit  of 
the  man : 

My  heart  sang  hymns,  and  preached  of  remembered 
days  and  places, — June  Sundays  in  country  churches,  to 
which  we  walked  along  the  edges  of  the  fields,  and  under 
branching  elms  hushed  in  Sunday  repose, — of  the  long, 
village  road,  with  the  open  wagons  and  chaises,  in  which 
the  red-handed  farmers  in  holiday  suits  drove  the  red- 
cheeked  family  to  the  church-door,  .  .  .  the  long  sermon, 
of  which  I  faithfully  remembered  the  text  and  forgot  the  drift, 
and  in  which  the  names  of  Galilee,  and  Mary,  and  Nazareth 
were  sweet  sounds  only,  rilling  my  mind  with  vague  imagery, 
whose  outline  has  long  since  faded,  the  flowers  and  the 
sunny  hay  fields  breathing  sweetly  in  at  the  open  window, 


220      PLEASANT   AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

.  .  .  the  people  in  the  pews,  all  whose  faces  have  vanished 
now,  save  hers,  so  many  years  my  elder,  yet  still  radiant 
with  youth,  queenly  in  beauty  and  bearing,  who  came,  when 
all  were  seated,  following  the  old  grandfather  with  powdered 
hair  and  gold-headed  cane,  and  who  sat  serene  during  the 
service,  while  I,  an  eight  years'  child,  felt  a  vague  sadness 
overshadow  the  sweet  day,  and  quite  forgot  the  sermon. 

Compare  his  pictures  with  those  of  any  other 
writer  of  Eastern  travel.  The  Howadji's  have 
that  golden  light  thrown  over  prosaic  reality. 
His  is  the  very  romance  of  travel.  There  is  noth 
ing  else  so  steeped  in  oriental  atmosphere  —  you 
feel  it  as  you  feel  the  warm,  soft  air  of  a  summer 
night.  He  takes  in  all  that  is  picturesque  and 
genial,  and  yields  himself  to  the  spell,  which  you, 
too,  will  come  under ;  and  you,  too,  will  dream  as 
he  did  and  think  yourself  in  Syria  or  on  the 
Nile. 

You  will  find  it  interesting  to  take  up  books  by 
other  writers  over  the  same  routes.  Look  over 
those  of  Bayard  Taylor ;  The  Land  and  the  Book  of 
Dr.  Thomson  ;  Henry  M.  Field's  From  Egypt  to 
Japan,  On  the  Desert,  and  Among  the  Holy  Hills  ; 


GEORGE   WILLIAM    CURTIS.  221 

William  C.  Prime's  Boat-Life  in  Egypt  and  Nubia 
and  Tent-Life  in  the  Holy  Land;  Charles  Dudley 
Warner's  My  Winter  on  the  A7/<?and  In  the  Levant; 
in  a  word  acquaint  yourself  with  the  experiences 
and  impressions  of  different  authors  on  the  same 
subject,  and  so  test  your  powers  of  criticism  and 
comparison,  and  arrive  at  your  own  conclusions. 
George  William  Curtis  was  born  in  Providence, 
Rhode  Island,  Feb.  24,  1824.  He  was  one  of  the 
brilliant  company  who  tried  the  famous  Brook 
Farm  experiment ;  spent  two  years  in  foreign  travel, 
and  after  his  return  was  on  the  staff  of  the  New 
York  Tribune;  was  editor  of  that  capital  but  short 
lived  magazine,  Putnam 's  Monthly ;  was  for  many 
years,  as  you  know,  one  of  the  most  popular  speak 
ers  in  the  "  lecture  field,"  and  long  ago  (perhaps 
more  than  thirty  years)  settled  into  the  Easy  Chair 
of  Harper's  Monthly,  since  which  withdrawal,  no 
more  books.  His  books  belong  to  his  early  man 
hood  ;  but,  as  before  indicated,  the  same  qualities 
of  elegance,  high-breeding,  refined  taste  which  dis 
tinguish  the  man,  are  in  all  his  work.  The  occu 
pant  of  the  Easy  Chair  is  the  Howadji  of  old.  The 


222     PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR  YOUNG  FOLKS. 

essay-ish  paragraphs  from  that  cosey  retreat  are 
choice  and  captivating. 

His  home  is  on  Staten  Island,  and  near  it  is  a 
little  Gothic  church  where  sometimes  of  a  Sunday, 
he  reads  a  sermon.  A  lady  who  was  an  ardent 
admirer  of  his,  while  visiting  in  the  neighborhood 
went  one  day  to  hear  him,  and  she  wrote  to  a 
friend : 

"  The  small  church  in  which  he  officiates  is  a 
quaint  building  with  many  points,  the  surroundings 
being  quite  country-like.  As  we  sat  in  the  car 
riage  waiting  for  the  gates  to  open,  the  birds  sang, 
making  sweeter  music  than  the  bells.  .  .  The 
chancel  window  is  of  stained  glass,  circular,  and 
the  colors  blue  and  gold,  and  each  side  are  fluted 
pillars  the  same  colors ;  a  little  lower  down,  the 
organ ;  and  as  these  are  the  prevailing  tints  every 
thing  harmonizes  and  the  effect  is  very  pretty.  As 
Mr.  Curtis  walked  up  the  aisle,  my  first  impression 
of  him  was  of  harmony.  I  was  not  disappointed 
in  the  man  who  wrote  Prue  and  I,  and  if  he  had 
leaned  over  the  desk  excusing  Adoniram's  absence 
from  church  I  should  not  have  been  surprised.  .  . 


GEORGE    WILLIAM    CURTIS.  223 

.  I  never  heard  such  clear,  fine  pronunciation  as 
his  ;  it  must  have  required  years  of  study  to  have 
reached  such  perfection." 

NOTE.  —  The  list  of  Curtis's  books  is  as  follows :  Lotus  Eating 
(a  record  of  summer  rambles  in  America),  Nile  Notes  of  a 
ffowadji,  Prue  and  /,  The  Howadji  in  Syria,  The  Potiphar 
Papers,  Trumps.  A  sketch  of  his  Life  is  to  be  found  in  The 
Century  for  February,  1883. 


DONALD    GRANT    MITCHELL. 


XII. 

DONALD   GRANT    MITCHELL. 

LET  us  call  him  Ik  Marvel,  for  by  that  name 
and  no  other  we  first  knew  him,  in  those  early 
books,  Reveries  of  a  Bachelor  and  Dream  Life.  Here 
is  the  identical  Dream  Life  now,  which  has  been 
lying  about  on  some  handy  shelf,  as  if  somebody 
would  be  wanting  to  take  it  up,  for  these  twenty- 
five  years  or  more ;  in  dark-green  covers,  with 
red  edges,  a  much  thumbed  and  slightly  shaky 
volume,  but  good  for  service  for  many  years  to 
come. 

If  you  were  to  look  it  over  —  this  book  written 
in  his  early  manhood  — you  would  notice  the  same 
quality  which  has  continued  to  prove  captivating 
to  his  readers  all  along  through  everything  he  has 
written  since.  You  will  see  a  love  of  country  life, 
warm  and  abiding ;  an  intuitive  sense  of  the  beau- 
227 


228       PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

tiful,  refinement,  and  taste ;  and  underlying  all, 
prevailing  over  all,  that  delicacy  and  sympathy 
and  tenderness  of  feeling  which  we  call  sentiment. 

Not  sentimentality  :  do  not  mistake,  for  there 
is  a  wide,  wide  difference  between  the  two,  as 
wide  as  that  between  an  affected  and  a  natural 
feeling,  between  sham  and  sincerity,  for  one  is 
true  while  the  other  is  pretence.  Shall  we  not 
define  sentiment  in  the  words  of  Sir  William 
Hamilton,  as  a  term  "  applied  to  the  higher  feel 
ings?"  You  will  understand  it  as  you  read  Ik 
Marvel.  In  this  very  book,  Dream  Life,  in  the 
second  chapter,  called  "With  my  Reader,"  he 
confesses  to  his  sympathy  and  his  honesty  in  writ 
ing  down  his  fancies,  and  says  : 

+ 

Nature  is  very  much  the  same  thing  in  one  man  that  it  is 

in  another :  and  as  I  have  already  said,  Feeling  has  a  higher 
truth  in  it  than  circumstance.  Let  it  only  be  touched  fairly 
and  honestly,  and  the  heart  of  humanity  answers.  .  .  . 
Of  one  thing  I  am  sure  :  —  if  my  pictures  are  fair,  worthy, 
and  hearty,  you  must  see  it  in  the  reading. 

That  is  just  what  has  come  to  pass.  People 
have  recognized  what  he  hoped  they  would,  and 


DONALD   GRANT    MITCHELL.  229 

those  who  read  him  of  the  new  generation  that 
has  come  up  since  the  words  were  written,  appre 
ciate  that  truth  to  human  experience,  those  touches 
which  show  the  whole  world  of  one  kin  in  loving 
and  hoping,  in  suffering  and  sorrowing.  He  is 
sympathetic  and  tender ;  the  very  atmosphere  of 
his  books  is  genial ;  they  are  full  of  home  love, 
fireside  content,  family  life,  and  the  domestic  feel 
ings  which  no  one  can  too  sacredly  cherish,  the 
sweet  sanctities  and  charities  of  every-day  living 
under  the  same  roof-tree,  by  the  same  hearth-side. 
Then,  again,  his  own  personality  is  in  every 
volume,  almost  on  every  page.  How  unlike  au 
thors  are  in  this  respect  you  will  one  day  know, 
when  you  are  able  to  discriminate  through  wider 
reading  and  careful  study  and  comparison.  Some 
writers  hardly  give  you  a  hint  of  their  individuality, 
they  are  so  separate  from  their  books,  as  if  the 
books  were  merely  the  result  of  brain-work,  or 
were  purely  imaginative  or  outside  of  themselves. 
Yet,  after  all,  it  is  this  personality  which  interests 
us  and  invests  one's  writings  with  a  charm  whose 
power  is  felt  at  once ;  even  if  it  is  such  bare  ego- 


230      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

tism  as  in  the  case  of  Ruskin,  we  delight  in  it. 
What  is  there  more  attractive  than  the  frank  reve 
lations  in  those  chapters  of  Prceterita  just  now 
being  published,  where  John  Ruskin  shows  us  all 
his  heart  and  talks  about  himself  with  the  candor 
of  dear  old  Anthony  Trollope  in  his  autobiography  ? 
Ik  Marvel  does  not  follow  the  Ruskin  method, 
to  be  sure,  but  the  boy,  the  collegian,  the  man  in 
his  own  library,  in  his  garden,  abroad  in  his 
fields,  is  before  us.  We  know  his  tastes,  his  fav 
orite  books,  his  walks,  his  employments,  his  feel 
ings.  We  have  him  for  a  companion,  and  he  is 
always  that,  more  than  he  is  the  author.  So  it 
follows  that  the  books  he  wrote  are  winning  and 
engaging,  and  very  much  alive  they  are,  too,  with 
real  life-blood  pulsing  through  them. 

Of  all  American  authors  I  can  think  of  no  one 
who  has  so  much  of  boy  feeling  and  boy  experi 
ence,  who  understands  a  boy's  nature  so  well. 
Usually  it  is  in  the  country  that  his  boy  finds  de 
light,  and  there  is  nothing  worth  finding  out  or 
enjoying  that  he  does  not  know  and  enter  into. 
Ik  Marvel  was  not  in  a  strict  sense  country-born, 


DONALD   GRANT    MITCHELL.  231 

for  his  native  place  was  the  old  town  of  Norwich 
in  Connecticut  (where  his  life  began  in  April, 
1822),  but  he  must  have  early  known  the  joys  that 
farm-life  has  for  a  child.  It  is  Connecticut  coun 
try  living  that  he  pictures ;  the  flavor  of  the  old 
hill  pastures,  of  the  meadows  and  orchards,  of 
blooming  peach-trees,  of  fennel  and  clover,  of 
wild-grapes  in  grape-time  and  nuts  in  nutting-time 
is  along  the  pages.  That  State  has  had  liberal 
treatment  in  the  lighter  literature  of  New  Eng 
land,  in  Mrs.  Stowe's  old-time  stories  and  those  of 
Rose  Terry  Cooke  and  Ik  Marvel's  loving  repro 
ductions  of  landscape  and  farm-life  as  in  his  boy 
hood  he  delighted  in  them  and  in  manhood  trans 
ferred  them  to  his  magic  page. 

I  have  marked  a  score  of  passages  in  his  books 
to  quote  for  you,  beginning  with  the  old  garret : 

I  know  no  nobler  forage  ground  for  a  romantic,  venture 
some,  mischievous  boy,  than  the  garret  of  an  old  family 
mansion  on  a  day  of  storm.  It  is  a  perfect  field  of  chivalry. 
The  heavy  rafters,  the  dashing  rain,  the  piles  of  spare  mat 
tresses  to  carouse  upon,  the  big  trunks  to  hide  in,  the  old 
white  coats  and  hats  hanging  in  obscure  corners,  like  ghosts 


232       PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

—  are  great !  And  it  is  so  far  away  from  the  old  lady  who 
keeps  rule  in  the  nursery  that  there  is  no  possible  risk  of  a 
scolding.  .  .  .  There  is  no  baby  in  the  garret  to  wake 
up.  There  is  no  company  in  the  garret  to  be  disturbed  by 
the  noise.  There  is  no  crotchety  old  uncle,  or  grandma, 
with  their  everlasting  —  "  Boys  —  boys  !  "  —  and  then  a  look 
of  such  horror  I 

But  there  is  not  space  for  many  of  them.  This, 
however,  you  shall  have  about  the  Fourth  of  July, 
from  one  of  his  later  books,  Bound  Together: 

I  do  not  know  what  the  habit  of  the  boys'  schools  may  be 
now-a-days ;  but  in  those  old  times  when  we  wore  round 
abouts,  and  studied  Adams'  Latin  Grammar,  the  Master  (or 
"  Principal,"  as  we  Scottishly  called  him)  used  to  give  us  a 
day's  excursion  by  omnibus  or  stage-coach  on  the  Fourth. 
And  we  piled  into,  and  all  over  such  vehicles,  by  the  dozen, 
infesting  the  doors  and  windows  and  roof  —  hanging  about 
the  beloved  stage-coach  like  bees  on  gone-by  fruit  —  making 
the  hills  resound  with  our  jollity.  .  .  .  The  old  ladies, 
standing  akimbo  in  the  doors,  stared  blank  astonishment 
at  us  through  their  iron-rimmed  spectacles,  and  shy  girls 
caught  admiring  glimpses  of  our  spick  and  span  new  white 
drilling  from  behind  the  farm-house  curtains.  What  a  tri 
umphal  progress  it  was  to  be  sure !  Dew  on  the  grass, 
larks  singing,  late  roses  blooming,  cherries  ripening,  tall 


DONALD   GRANT   MITCHELL.  233 

rye  waving,  the  old  coach  crick-cracking.  .  .  .  Then  we 
stopped  towards  high  noon  at  some  huge,  lumbering  vil 
lage  tavern  for  dinner.  A  tavern  dinner  I  —  my  mouth 
waters  even  now  to  think  what  ambrosian  fare  had  been 
provided.  ...  A  turkey —  positively  a  turkey  (and 
stuffed  too)  —  at  one  end  of  the  long  table,  and  at  the  other 
—  great  heavens  !  —  a  dapper,  crisp,  curled-tailed  pig,  with 
a  sprig  of  parsley  in  his  mouth,  and  giblets  and  what-not, 
in  a  little  paunch-y  tureen  of  gravy  close  by. 

And  this : 

Who  that  feels  the  gray  shadows  of  middle  age  thickening 
over  his  head  (for  my  part  I  confess  to  it)  does  not  remem 
ber  the  peach-orchard  near  to  every  old  homestead  of  New 
England,  and  the  rich  burden  of  rare-ripes  and  free-stones 
and  cling-stones  (before  yet  the  magnificent  Melocoton  was 
known)  and  how  round-jacketed  school-boys  with  big 
pouches  of  pockets  thought  it  no  theft  to  abstract  a  few 
from  between  the  fence-bars. 

And  these  scraps —  tantalizing  enough  I  trust  to 
make  you  read  Ik  Marvel  and  become  acquainted 
with  him  : 

I  believe  that  boys'  vacations,  now-a-days,  come  around 
in  July,  or  thereabouts;  but  five  and  thirty  years  ago,  in 
those  boys'  schools  of  which  I  had  painful  experience,  va- 


234      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

cations  happened  somewhere  in  October.  .  .  .  What  a 
gorgeous  thing  it  was  to  take  that  first  tramp  after  the  re 
turn  .  .  .  through  the  melon-patch  where  the  yellow- 
faced  cantaloupes  smiled  at  us  !  We  knew  well  enough  that 
the  cantaloupes  would  not  be  gone  ;  we  knew  some  "  roasting 
ears  "  would  be  left :  we  knew  the  Pound-sweets  would  be 
just  at  their  best.  ...  I  do  not  know  how  a  month 
could  have  a  better  naming  for  a  boy  than  to  be  called  va 
cation  month.  ...  I  think  that  a  good,  wholesome  long 
ing  for  vacation-time  to  come  is  one  of  the  best  possible 
evidences  that  a  boy  is  kept  up  to  the  notch  of  a  good  daily 
gain. 

And  now  see  what  advice  he  gives  in  the  clos 
ing  words  of  "Two  College  Talks,"  to  students : 

Live  up  to  the  level  of  your  best  thought ;  keep  the  line 
of  your  life  tense  and  true ;  it  is  but  a  thread ;  but  it  be 
longs  to  the  great  Republican  warp,  where  Time  is  weaving 
a  Nation.  You  cannot  alter  its  attachment  yonder,  to  the 
past  —  nor  yonder,  to  the  unrolling  years.  .  .  .  And  if 
you  would  broider  such  things  there  as  will  stand  fast,  and 
carry  your  name  worthily  upon  the  roll  of  history,  you  will 
have  need  of  all  your  energy  to  dare  —  all  your  cultivation 
to  refine  —  of  all  your  charity  to  ennoble. 

Let  the  hope  of  this  .  .  .  keep  you  wakeful  to  all 
honorable  duties.  Let  it  make  you  bold,  and  honest,  and 


DONALD   GRANT   MITCHELL.  235 

painstaking.  Let  it  nerve  you  to  shun  affectations  —  to  hate 
shams  —  to  love  truth  —  to  cherish  simplicity;  and  then  — 
whatever  may  betide — you  will  walk  with  a  freer  and  more 
elastic  step  toward  the  gates,  where  we  must  all  go  in. 

Ik  Marvel  wrote  one  novel,  about  twenty  years 
ago,  Dr.  Johns,  the  story  of  an  old-time  Con 
necticut  minister,  and  he  has  a  volume  called 
Seven  Stories,  with  Basement  and  Attic,  made  up 
from  reminiscences  of  travel ;  but  with  these  ex 
ceptions,  and  the  two  named  at  the  beginning  of 
this  paper,  his  writings  are  chiefly  of  rural  life. 

Many  years  ago  he  bought  a  country  place  not 
far  from  New  Haven,  and  there  after  his  own 
tasteful  plan  re-modelled  and  embellished  till  the 
beautiful  home  which  he  named  Edgewood  grew 
with  the  years,  as  a  true  home  with  all  its  acces 
sories  and  adornments  of  tree  and  vine,  of  shrub 
and  lawn  must  grow,  for  it  does  not  come  into 
being  in  a  day.  To  know  about  it,  and  how  the 
master's  heart  was  in  all  the  work  and  in  all  the 
growing,  you  must  read  My  Farm  of  Edgewood — 
a  book  practical  enough  for  an  agriculturist,  yet 
romantic  enough  for  a  poet ;  picturesque,  and  full 


236      PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

of  that  personality  before  referred  to.  You  will 
read  about  the  stone  cottage  he  built,  with  its  gables 
and  sharp  pent  roof,  the  gray  walls  which  lichens 
and  creepers  are  decorating,  and  all  about  his 
country  tastes  which  have  made  it  so  attractive 
without,  so  restful  within. 

If  you  wish  to  know  more  about  it,  and  see  the 
sketches  of  house  and  gable,  of  porch  and  gate 
way,  and  know  just  what  the  ideas  of  the  owner 
were  and  are,  about  the  making  of  a  home,  from 
the  house-building  down  to  the  simplest  details, 
which  with  him  are  esthetic  and  refined,  read  Out- 
of-Town  Places. 

If  you  would  know  yet  more,  and  more  about 
the  owner,  read  Wet  Days  at  Edgewood,  which  is 
made  up  of  rambling  sketches  about  some  of  the 
"  worthies "  who  wrote  something  concerning 
agriculture.  Of  such  books  he  says  he  has  "  a 
motley  array  "  in  one  corner  of  his  library.  Be 
not  deterred  by  the  fact  that  he  calls  them  "farm- 
books,"  for  not  to  these  does  he  confine  himself ; 
on  the  contrary,  they  serve  as  the .  excuse  (as  one 
may  say)  for  some  of  the  most  delightful  off-hand 


DONALD   GRANT   MITCHELL.  237 

writing  and  personal  revelations  of  our  author  him 
self.  They  remind  one  of  Leigh  Hunt  in  more 
ways  than  one,  but  chiefly  in  that  joy  in  books 
which  is  so  marked  a  feature  in  Hunt. 

What  Ik  Marvel  says  so  lovingly  and  gracefully 
about  Virgil  and  others  among  the  ancients  is 
pleasant  reading  for  your  own  rainy  days ;  and 
be  sure  to  read  those  papers,  called  "  A  Picture 
of  Rain,"  "English  Weather,"  "Old  English 
Homes,"  "  A  British  Tavern,"  "  A  Brace  of  Pas 
torals,"  "Goldsmith,"  "William  Cowper,"  "Gil 
bert  White,"  and  "  Country  Story-tellers."  What 
toothsome  dainties  in  prose  they  are  !  If  you  are 
tempted  to  take  up  some  of  the  authors  he  writes 
about,  so  much  the  better.  Why  not  read  the 
Vicar  of  Wakefield  after  you  have  read  what  he 
says.  "  I  do,"  he  writes,  "  still  keep  his  Essays 
or  his  Vicar  in  my  hand,  or  in  my  thought  most 
lovingly." 

And  how  can  you  let  "  As  you  Like  It "  alone 
after  reading : 

One  pastoral  remains  to  mention,  published  at  the  very 
opening  of  the  year  1600,  and  spending  its  fine  forest- 


238     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

aroma  thenceforward  all  down  the  century.     I  mean  Shakes 
peare's  play  of  "  As  you  Like  It." 

From  beginning  to  end  the  grand  old  forest  of  Arden  is 
astir  overhead;  from  beginning  to  end  the  brooks  brawl1 
in  your  ear ;  from  beginning  to  end  you  smell  the  bruised 
ferns  and  the  delicate-scented  wood  flowers.  ...  Who 
.  .  .  will  match  us  the  fair,  lithe,  witty,  capricious,  mirth 
ful,  buxom  Rosalind?  Nowhere  in  books  have  we  met 
with  her  like,  — but  only  at  some  long-gone  picnic  in  the 
woods,  where  we  worshipped  "blushing  sixteen"  in  dainty 
boots  and  white  muslin.  .  .  . 

.  .  .  "As  you  Like  It "  is  as  broad  as  the  sky,  or  love, 
or  folly,  or  hope. 

In  Bound  Together  —  the  felicitous  title  of  a 
"  Sheaf  of  Papers"  —  you  come  upon  more  of  the 
Edgewood  pastorals,  under  the  divisions  called 
"  Procession  of  the  Months,"  and  "  In  doors  and 
Out  of  doors,"  winding  up  with  a  children's  chapter 
and  Thanksgiving  Day. 

The  influence  of  Ik  Marvel  is  tranquilizing  and 
refining.  If  sometimes  there  is  an  excess  of  sen 
timent,  we  know  that  the  springs  are  pure  and 
sweet,  the  sources  deep  and  unfailing  of  such 
tender  feeling  that  we  do  not  care  to  criticise. 


DONALD   GRANT   MITCHELL.  239 

He  has  kept  his  hold  upon  two  generations  of 
readers  because  he  is  true  to  human  nature,  in 
sympathy  with  childhood,  and  one  at  heart  with 
youths  and  maidens,  so  that  the  stories  he  tells 
are  their  own  lives,  their  own  hopes  and  joys  and 
anticipations.  There  is  an  air  of  repose,  of  rest- 
fulness  and  peace  about  his  writings.  Some  one 
has  said  of  them  that  "  they  are  the  wood-fire  on 
the  hearth  in  American  letters.  They  are  light, 
warmth,  cheer." 


NOTE.  —  Nearly  all  his  writings  are  in  the  following  books : 
Fresh  Gleanings  (European  Travel),  Reveries  of  a  Barhelor, 
Dream  Life,  My  Farm  of  Edgewood,  Wet  Days  at  Edge- 
wood,  Out-of-Town  Places  (formerly  Rural  Studies),  Doctor 
Johns,  Seven  Stories,  with  Basement  and  Attic,  Bound  To 
gether,  About  Old  Story-  Tellers  ;  and  a  new  and  complete  edi 
tion  has  just  been  published,  in  unique,  simple  style,  with 
characteristic  prefatory  notes  by  the  author. 


JACOB    ABBOTT. 


XIII. 

"H.    H."   AND    OTHERS. 

SINCE  this  series  of  papers  was  begun,  one  of 
the  foremost  women-writers  of  America  has 
passed  from  this  life.  The  hand  of  "  H.  H."  will 
write  nothing  more.  How  pathetic  that  brief 
statement  seems  when  we  think  of  the  brilliant 
spirit  that  was  here  a  little  more  than  a  year  ago ! 

It  is  well  worth  your  while  at  this  time,  when 
her  last  work  is  passing  through  the  press,  to  give 
attention  to  the  books  she  has  contributed  to  our 
literature.  I  know  that  they  are  all  about  you, 
some  of  them,  indeed,  almost  fresh  from  her  pen 
—  it  seems  but  yesterday,  perhaps,  that  you  read 
Ramona,  and  Zeph  you  have  but  just  laid  down. 

Looking  back  now  and  considering  how  late  it 
was  when  she  began  writing  prose  (in  1866,  when 
she  was  thirty-five  years  old),  never  dreaming  of 

243 


244     PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

becoming  an  author  of  distinction,  we  are  sur 
prised  at  both  the  quantity  and  quality. 

Let  me  recall  to  you,  in  scantest  outline,  her 
personal  and  literary  history.  As  "  H.  H."  the 
world  of  her  readers  —  and  a  wide  world  it  is  — 
has  known  and  will  remember  her ;  the  two  modest 
initials  which  represent  such  an  amount  of  ex 
quisite  work,  which  have  always  been  so  warmly 
welcomed,  and  which  will  be  so  sadly  missed! 
Helen  Maria  Fiske  was  her  maiden  name,  and  she 
was  born  in  Amherst,  Massachusetts,  October  18, 
1831.  On  the  28th  of  October,  1852,  she  was 
married  to  Captain  Edward  B.  Hunt  of  the  United 
States  Army,  and  on  the  2d  of  October,  1863.  she 
became  a  widow.  One  son  had  died  when  an 
infant,  and  the  other  died  in  less  than  two  years 
after  his  father,  so  that,  bereaved  and  heart 
broken,  she  withdrew  from  society  and  even  from 
her  best  friends,  giving  herself  up  to  the  feeling 
that  life  had  nothing  more  for  her. 

She  had  a  fine,  natural  gift  of  expression  in 
poetry,  and  when  the  first  sharp  pain  was  over  she 
did  what  hundreds  of  others  have  done,  put  her 


"H.    H."   AND   OTHERS.  245 

sorrow  into  verse,  and  soon  the  world  recognized 
a  new  poet.  A  sketch  called  "  In  the  White 
Mountains"  was  her  introduction  to  prose,  and 
the  success  and  fame  which  eventually  came  to 
her  from  this  simple  beginning  were  a  revelation 
and  continual  surprise  to  her. 

In  October,  1875,  she  was  married  to  William 
Sharpless  Jackson,  and  thenceforth  her  home  was 
in  Colorado  Springs,  whence  she  went  for  benefit 
to  her  health,  to  California,  where,  in  San  Fran 
cisco,  she  died  August  12,  1885. 

How  slight  is  this  thread  of  facts  concerning  a 
woman  so  rich  in  personal  and  intellectual  gifts, 
of  a  spirit  so  alert,  so  responsive,  so  versatile,  so 
full  of  enthusiasm !  You  know  well  how  her 
burning  indignation  found  a  voice  that  made  it 
self  heard  for  the  Indian ;  and  you  will  mark  all 
through  her  writings  that  she  was  easily  kindled 
—  a  marvellously  susceptible,  electric  being,  all 
ardor  and  fire.  You  see  it  all  through  her  Bits  of 
Talk  about  Home  Matters,  where  she  enters  the 
lists,  or  charges  as  a  free  lance,  in  hot  attack  on 
those  who  are  guilty  of  wrongs  to  children. 


246      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

Never  did  childhood  have  a  more  fearless,  a  more 
valiant  champion,  and 'one  can  but  think  how  in 
judicious  parents  must  have  winced  under  the 
pricks  and  thrusts  of  her  weapon  that  pierced  the 
stoutest  mail. 

Her  feelings  were  intense  and  her  powers  of 
observation  of  the  keenest ;  she  had  the  swift  in 
tuitions  of  genius  and  her  pen  was  true  to  the 
thing  she  had  to  say.  Gifts  for  writing  may  come 
by  nature,  but  if  that  were  all,  how  discouraging 
it  would  be  !  What  if  "  H.  H."  had  never  de 
veloped  what  she  seems  hardly  to  have  known  she 
possessed  until  the  accident  (almost)  of  a  single 
sketchy  article  in  prose  induced  her  to  attempt 
further  work  ?  Study,  reading,  culture,  pains 
taking,  thoroughness  —  all  these  are  quantities 
which  enter  into  the  training  of  a  writer.  No  suc 
cessful  author  ever  trusted  to  born  gifts;  the 
equipments  are  not  ready  provided,  and  it  is  not 
always  a  royal  highway  with  banners  flying  along 
which  one  goes.  I  think  I  have  seen  that  she 
was  an  acute  critic  of  her  own  composition  as  well 
as  that  of  others ;  that  she  made  a  careful  study 


"H.    H.      AND   OTHERS.  247 

of  style,  and,  as  an  instance  of  it,  that  she  took 
certain  paragraphs  of  Higginson's  which  she  much 
admired  and  changed  the  construction  of  the  sen 
tences  to  see  in  what  their  power  and  beauty  as 
purely  literary  work  consisted,  and  if  any  other 
arrangement  would  do  as  well. 

You  might  try  that  with  almost  any  descriptive 
page  of  her  writing.  You  will  find  a  wonderful 
affluence  of  language,  charged  with  feeling,  often 
the  words  rushing  on  impetuously ;  but  what  ar 
tistic  finish,  fitness,  and  completeness  !  Take  this 
from  her  description  of  the  Rocky  Mountains  in 
her  Bits  of  Travel  at  Home  : 

There  seemed  no  defined  horizon  to  west,  or  north,  or 
south  ;  only  a  great,  outlying  continent  of  mountain  peaks, 
bounding,  upholding,  containing  the  valley,  and  rounding, 
upholding  and  piercing  the  dome  above  it.  There  was  no 
sound,  no  sight,  no  trace  of  human  life.  The  silence,  the 
sense  of  space  in  these  Rocky  Mountain  solitudes  cannot 
be  expressed,  neither  can  the  peculiar  atmospheric  beauty 
be  described.  It  is  the  result  partly  of  the  grand  distances, 
partly  of  the  rarefied  air.  The  shapes  are  the  shapes  of 
the  north,  but  the  air  is  like  the  air  of  the  tropics,  shimmer 
ing,  kindling.  .  .  .  No  dome  of  Constantinople  or 


248     PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

Venice,  no  pyramid  of  Egypt  ever  glowed  and  swam  in 
warmer  light  and  of  warmer  hue  than  do  these  colossal 
mountains. 

Read  what  she  says  about  the  wild  flowers  of 
Colorado,  where  words  crowd  upon  words  as  if 
they  could  not  keep  pace  with  her  admiration, 
and  the  very  pages  glow  and  burn  with  color. 
Read  about  the  gorgeousness,  the  glory  of  autumn 
woods  at  Bethlehem  in  what  she  calls  the  "  Mir 
acle  Play,"  and  wherever  she  writes  of  skies  or 
flowers,  of  anything  rich,  warm,  beautiful.  Her 
tastes  were  sumptuous ;  she  revelled  in  color,  and 
nowhere  can  be  found  finer  word  paintings  than 
in  her  books.  And  the  descriptions  are  always  in 
harmony  with  the  subject.  Here,  for  example, 
from  "  The  Katrina  Saga,"  in  Glimpses  of  Three 
Coasts,  is  a  bit  from  the  page  and  a  half  about  the 
islands  of  the  Norway  coast : 

There  are  myriads  of  them  still  unknown,  untrodden,  and 
sure  to  remain  so  forever,  no  matter  how  long  the  world 
may  last  ...  At  the  mouths  of  the  great  fjords  they 
seem  sometimes  to  have  fallen  back  and  into  line,  as  if  to 
do  honor  to  whomever  might  come  sailing  in.  They  must 


"H.    H.      AND   OTHERS.  249 

have  greatly  helped  the  splendor  of  the  processions  of 
viking  ships,  a  thousand  years  ago,  in  the  days  when  a  vik 
ing  thought  nothing  of  setting  sail  for  the  south  or  the  east 
with  six  or  seven  hundred  ships  in  his  fleet.  If  their  birch- 
trees  were  as  plumy  then  as  now,  there  was  nothing  finer 
than  they  in  all  that  a  viking  adorned  his  ships  with  not 
even  the  gilt  dragons  at  the  prow. 

If  you  wish  to  appreciate  some  of  the  finest 
work  done  by  any  of  our  countrymen  and  women, 
read  Ramona  again.  It  will  bear  more  than  one 
perusal.  Leaving  out  of  the  question  the  purpose 
for  which  it  was  written,  and  reading  it  just  as  a 
story,  consider  its  attractiveness  and  power.  Notice 
the  grace  of  the  narrative  —  how  easily  it  slips 
along  without  a  break  or  a  dull  sentence  or  a  sen 
tence  you  would  skip  !  the  charm  of  the  language, 
not  a  word  that  does  not  fit  its  place  —  how  tempt 
ing  and  how  delightful  it  is !  the  beauty  of  the 
description  —  you  are  transported  to  the  Mexican 
house  and  are  sharer  of  the  life  on  the  balcony, 
in  the  court,  are  present  at  the  sheep-shearing  and 
the  feast !  the  reality  and  life-likeness  of  the  peo 
ple  who  live  there — you  become  intent  upon 


250     PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

watching  the  movements  of  the  shrewd  Senora 
and  wonder  over  the  success  or  failure  of  her 
plans.  Study  its  construction,  and  the  way  in 
which  character  develops ;  see  with  what  a  firm 
hand  the  author  keeps  the  mastery  over  her  sub 
ject,  and  yet  with  what  impetuosity  of  feeling  she 
enters  into  the  wrongs  of  Ramona  and  Allessan- 
dro!  You  will  enjoy  comparing  this  story  with 
two  strong  novelettes  by  another  of  our  best 
women  writers — The  Led  Horse  Claim  and  John 
Bodewiris  Testimony,  by  Mary  Hallock  Foote,  the 
artist  author. 

In  reading  "  H.  H."  you  always  have  a  sense 
of  such  exuberance,  such  rapturous  enjoyment  of 
everything,  perfume,  flowers,  sky  and  sea,  scenery, 
travel ;  she  was  part  of  them,  partner,  sharer  with 
them.  She  threw  her  whole  soul  into  everything, 
and  a  vital,  positive  life  pulses  along  her  pages. 
Bear  this  in  your  thought  as  your  eye  follows  down 
the  lines,  and  see  how  alive  they  are.  You  can 
separate  some  authors  from  their  work  ;  or,  to  put  it 
as  it  is,  you  cannot  by  any  possibility  connect  them 
with  it  as  a  warm,  human,  living  force  ;  you  can- 


"H.    H.      AND   OTHERS.  251 

not  by  what  is  written  tell  what  manner  of  man  or 
woman  held  the  pen.  But  "  H.  H."  is  in  every 
line,  an  ardent,  eager,  spirited  woman,  full  of 
poetry,  glowing  with  enthusiasm  which  was  ready 
to  leap  into  flame,  and  infusing  herself  into  every 
thing  she  wrote,  coloring  everything  by  her  own 
personality.  In  no  other  American  woman  is  this 
so  pronounced  a  trait ;  in  few  will  you  find  a  nat 
ure  at  the  same  time  so  tropical  and  so  sympa 
thetic,  taking  expression  in  a  style  as  clear  and 
vigorous  as  it  is  captivating. 

Especially  for  children  she  wrote  Nelly's  Silver 
Mine,  Bits  of  Talk  for  Young  Folks,  Mammy  Tittle- 
back  and  her  Family,  and  The  Hunter  Cats  of  Con- 
norloa,  besides  editing  Letters  from  a  Cat  (which 
was  by  her  mother).  The  titles  of  her  other  prose 
works  are  Bits  of  Travel  (foreign,  and  very  charm 
ing),  Bits  of  Travel  at  Home  (California,  Colorado 
and  New  England),  Bits  of  Talk  about  Home  Mat 
ters,  Mercy  Philbrick's  Choice,  Hetty's  Strange  His 
tory,  Ramona,  A  Century  of  Dishonor,  Zeph,  Glimpses 
of  Three  Coasts  (California  and  Oregon,  Scotland 
and  England,  Norway,  Denmark  and  Germany) ; 


252     PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

and  soon  to  be  published,  Between  Whiles,  a  vol 
ume  of  short  stories,  of  which,  not  long  before  her 
death  she  wrote  to  her  publishers,  "  Isn't  it  a 
lovely  title  ? " 

To  what  other  authors  of  the  many  there  are, 
shall  I  call  your  attention  in  the  space  that  is  left 
me  ?  Do  you  need,  does  this  generation  of  young 
people  need,  to  be  reminded  of  the  beloved  Jacob 
Abbott  who  did  more  for  them,  I  have  no  hesita 
tion  in  saying,  than  any  other  writer,  perhaps  it 
would  be  safe  to  say  than  any  two  or  more  wri 
ters  ?  Abraham  Lincoln  paid  his  tribute  to  the 
little  "  Red  Histories  "  by  saying  that  he  learned 
from  them  all  the  history  he  ever  knew ;  and  here, 
not  many  weeks  ago,  a  lady  who  has  written  many 
excellent  things,  in  a  little  article  about  bringing 
up  boys,  says,  "over  all  the  years  that  lie  be 
tween  us,  I  send  my  love  to  Jonas,  as  one  of  the 
best  companions  a  little  girl  ever  had,  and  the 
charming  mentor  of  the  little  girl's  brother." 

Did  it  ever  occur  to  you  that  so  long  ago  as  the 
time  when  Washington  Irving  and  Cooper  were 
writing  sketches  and  novels  this  author  was  busy 


"H.    H.       AND   OTHERS.  253 

over  books  for  the  young,  and  that  he  kept  on 
writing  book  after  book  for  them,  and  that  that 
good,  wise  pen  of  his  was  never  idle  ?  He  had 
wonderful  tact  and  skill  as  a  teacher,  in  manage 
ment,  in  understanding  character,  a  clear  insight 
into  what  the  needs  of  young  people  were,  and 
from  writing  something  to  help  those  immediate 
ly  under  his  care,  the  question  naturally  arose, 
Why  not  help  thousands  of  boys  and  girls  ?  Hence 
some  of  the  wise  and  sound  little  books  which 
have  gone  on  in  their  influence  in  the  ratio  of 
Edward  Everett  Hale's  Ten  Times  One. 

The  mind  of  Jacob  Abbott  must  have  been  as 
clear  as  crystal  to  judge  by  the  way  his  thoughts 
appear  in  print,  by  his  accurate  way  of  putting 
things,  candid,  discriminating  and  to  the  point. 
They  are  every  day  facts  and  moral  lessons,  but 
duty  is  presented  as  a  pleasure,  and  the  right  way 
as  the  tempting  way.  Practical  duties  and  em 
ployments,  doing  good,  living  right,  building  up 
character  —  these  are  favorite  themes,  just  as 
vital  to-day  as  when  he  wrote,  and  more  needed, 
good  for  a  thousand  years  and  as  much  longer  as 


254      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

human  nature,  boy  and  girl  nature,  are  what  they 
were  and  are. 

You  have  already  had  loving  biographies  of  this 
teacher,  pastor  and  author,  and  I  am  not  expected 
to  dwell  upon  the  subject,  but  let  me  say  that  not 
long  ago  I  had  occasion  to  look  over  some  of  his 
books  in  a  great  public  library,  and  found  them 
thumbed  and  worn  —  that  told  the  story  of  their 
popularity.  History,  biography,  travels,  science, 
out-of-door  employments — he  wrote  of  all  these. 
In  his  series  of  adventure  and  travel  he  was  pio 
neer  of  the  Family  Flights,  the  Zig-Zag  and  Bodley 
books  and  so  many  of  that  class  which  are  favor 
ites  to-day.  The  stories  of  history  and  of  biog 
raphy  written  by  himself  and  his  brother  (John 
S.  C.  who  was  also  preacher  and  teacher)  do  not 
go  out  of  date.  Divided  into  "  Founders  of  Em 
pires,  "  British  Kings  and  Queens,"  "  Queens  and 
Heroines,"  "  Heroes  of  Roman  History,"  "  Later 
British  Kings  and  Queens,"  and  "  Rulers  of  Later 
Times,"  they  make  a  trim  and  compact  little  ref 
erence  library  of  much  in  small  space  for  your 
handy  corner  and  often  use.  Any  young  person 


"  H.    H."   AND   OTHERS.  25$ 

who  was  brought  up  on  Jacob  Abbott's  clear  sense 
books,  before  the  days  of  sensationalism,  has 
something  to  be  grateful  for ;  and  one  who  goes 
to  them  now  finds  soundness  and  simplicity, 
wholesome  truth  wholesomely  treated,  a  whole 
gospel  to  be  guided  by. 

You  hardly  need  to  have  recalled  to  your  mind 
another  friend  not  long  gone  from  this  me,  the 
author  of  Yesterdays  with  Authors,  and  Underbrush. 
The  first-named  is  one  of  the  books  that  stimulates 
the  love  for  books.  James  T.  Fields  appreciated 
literature  himself,  and  was  a  leal  friend  to  the 
young  writers  who  went  to  him  with  their  first 
lings.  He  had  keenest  joy  in  books,  and  in  those 
papers  he  shows  the  pleasant  side,  to  make  his 
authors  attractive.  It  was  one  of  the  intense  de 
sires  of  his  later  life  to  have  a  good  influence  over 
young  people,  and  his  words  are  wise  and  cheer 
ing  from  out  his  own  experience  and  genial  whole- 
heartedness.  In  his  Underbrush  he  says : 

Instead  of  trying  so  hard  as  some  of  us  do  to  be  happy, 
as  if  that  were  the  sole  purpose  of  life,  I  would,  if  I  were 
a  boy  again,  try  still  harder  to  deserve  happiness. 


256      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

Of  books  and  authors,  this  is  characteristic  of 
the  man  : 

We  can  never  be  grateful  enough  to  the  men  and  women 
who  have  written  books  to  make  us  more  in  love  with  the 
beauties  and  harmonies  of  nature,  who  have  themselves 
been  transported  with  the  glories  of  her  divine  works. 

And  he  adds  that  he  always  felt  like  taking  off 
his  hat  when  he  met  in  the  street  the  man  (George 
B.  Emerson)  who  wrote  that  valuable  and  attract 
ive  work  on  the  "  Trees  and  Shrubs  of  Massa 
chusetts." 

Already  you  have  a  long  list,  but  you  must  add 
the  dainty  prose  of  Aldrich  ;  and  Warner  with  his 
mellowness  and  humor;  and  Holmes  with  his 
scintillations  of  wit  flashing  like  the  white  light, 
the  pellucid  light  of  diamonds  —  unique,  the  only 
man  of  his  kind,  it  will  be  long  before  you  see 
another  "  autocrat."  And  in  choosing  American 
books  do  not  forget  Charles  G.  Leland's  Algonquin 
Legends,  and  his  book  about  the  gypsies ;  or 
Drake's  Old  Landmarks  of  Boston,  and  Nooks  and 
Corners  of  the  New  England  Coast,  and  others  from 
his  pen ;  or  Mrs.  Rollins'  New  England  By-gones, 


*H.    H.      AND   OTHERS.  257 

a  vivid  reproduction  of  rural  home-life  sweet  and 
true  and  charming,  loyal  to  the  past,  but  fresh  as 
a  morning  in  May ;  or  Dana's  Two  Years  before  the 
Mast,  best  of  all  sea-books  that  have  been  written 
from  a  sailor's  point  of  view,  as  enchanting  for  a 
boy  as  the  Arabian  Nights,  as  homely  in  its  de 
tails  as  Robinson  Crusoe.  What  vitality  there  is 
about  a  book  which  has  real  life  inside  of  it,  in  its 
texture  and  substance,  in  its  warp  and  woof !  And 
such  is  this. 

I  cannot  refrain  from  including  another  book, 
most  delightful  in  its  pictures  of  life  in  the  Old 
Dominion,  having  the  appearance  of  being  genuine 
ly  as  well  as  in  form  autobiographic  (as  it  per 
haps  is  to  some  extent)  —  the  Judith  of  Marion 
Harland,  to  me  more  fascinating  than  anything 
else  of  hers  I  have  ever  read. 

And  yet  one  more,  a  thin  volume  of  only  five 
sketches  —  and  one  of  them  incomplete  —  its  title 
Old  Salem.  The  author,  who  wrote  under  the 
name  of  "  Eleanor  Putnam,"  was  Mrs.  Harriet  L. 
V.  Bates,  and  she  died  at  Brookline,  Massachu 
setts,  March  13,  1886,  at  about  the  age  of  thirty. 


258      PLEASANT   AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

I  should  like  to  quote  liberally  from  "  Old  Salem 
Shops,"  and  from  "  A  Salem  Dame  School,"  to 
which  she  went  wearing  antiquated  raiment,  and 
carrying  for  a  satchel 

the  old  green  bag  in  which  my  grandfather  had  carried  his 
law  papers.  It  was  so  long  and  I  so  short  that  it  nearly 
touched  the  ground  as  I  walked,  and  my  book  and  my  ap 
ple  rolled  about  unpleasantly. 

For  a  choice  piece  of  writing,  a  perfect  little 
crystal,  read  her  "Salem  Cupboards" — it  is  as 
dainty  a  bit  as  you  will  often  find,  after  this  style  : 

Foremost  in  the  memory  of  delightful  Salem  cupboards 
stands  the  dining-room  closet  of  a  second-cousin  of  ours 
whom  we  called  Cousin  Susan.  ...  A  most  delicious 
odor  came  forth  when  the  door  was  opened  :  a  hint  of  the 
spiciness  of  rich  cake,  a  tingling  sense  of  preserved  ginger, 
and  a  certain  ineffable  sweetness  which  no  other  closet  ever 
possessed.  ...  At  the  left  hand  of  Cousin  Susan's 
shelves  of  china  was  a  little  cupboard  with  a  diamond-paned 
glass  door.  .  .  .  This  little  glass  cupboard  held  the 
stock  of  foreign  sweetmeats ;  the  round-shouldered  blue 
jars,  inclosed  in  network  of  split  bamboo,  which  contained 
the  fiery,  amber  ginger ;  the  flat  boxes  of  guava  jelly,  hot 
curry  powders,  chilli  sauce,  and  choleric  Bengal  chutney. 


"H.    H/'   AND  OTHERS.  259 

Here  were   two  miniature  casks  of  tamarinds,  jolly  and 
black.    .     .    . 

There  were  black  fruit-cake  in  a  japanned  box ;  "  hearts 
and  rounds  "  of  rich  yellow  pound  cake ;  and  certain  deli 
cate  but  inane  little  sponge  biscuit,  of  which  our  cousin 
spoke  by  the  old-fashioned  name  of  diet  —  or,  as  she  chose 
to  pronounce  it  "  dier  "  —  bread.  She  always  called  the 
sponge  cakes  "  little  dier  breads." 

An  entire  paper  ought  to  be  given  to  single 
books  where  scenes  or  incidents  of  our  own  coun 
try  form  the  subject.  Another  might  profitably 
be  devoted  to  biographies  of  American  men  and 
women  by  American  writers.  In  the  "  Notes  "  to 
the  preceding  papers  I  have  furnished  you  with 
many  titles,  but  only  a  small  number  out  of  the 
rich  store.  To  name  a  few  more,  beginning  with 
Sparks  who  wrote  twenty-five  of  persons  more  or 
less  associated  with  our  history,  how  quickly  you 
are  reminded  of  the  full  and  carefully  prepared 
and  edited  Lives  and  Letters  of  Daniel  Webster, 
George  Ticknor,  Charles  Sumner ;  the  memorials 
of  Bryant,  and  of  John  Howard  Payne  who  wrote 
"  Home,  Sweet  Home,"  of  Agassiz,  by  his  wife, 


260     PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

of  Jacob  Abbott  (including,  or  prefacing,  the  work 
its  author  would  have  desired  to  be  best  known 
by,  The  Young  Christian),  the  Reminiscences  of  Wil 
liam  Ellery  Channing,  by  Elizabeth  Peabody,  the 
Life  and  Letters  of  James  and  Lucretia  Mott  (de 
lightful  record  of  Quaker  ways,  of  a  liberal,  loving 
household,  and  characters  greatly  to  be  admired), 
Miss  Stebbins'  memories  of  Charlotte  Cushman, 
the  Letters,  with  a  biographical  sketch  of  Lydia 
Maria  Child  (which  will  make  you  regret  that  it 
is  too  late  to  let  her  know  how  you  honor  her  for 
her  great,  royal  heart  of  unselfish  devotion  to  a 
cause  she  was  enlisted  in,  for  her  loyalty  to  friends 
and  her  patience  and  bravery),  the  memoir  of 
Mrs.  Edward  Livingston,  of  Mary  Lyon,  of  Alice 
B.  Haven,  of  Mary  L.  Ware,  of  Mrs.  Prentiss 
(author  of  Stepping  Heavenward),  that  of  General 
Bartlett,  of  James  T.  Fields,  Holmes'  memoir  of 
Motley,  the  sketches  called  Worthy  Women  of  our 
First  Century  (which  includes  that  rare  woman  and 
scholar,  Mrs.  Ripley  of  Concord,  Massachusetts), 
the  list  of  distinguished  men  in  the  "  American 
Statesmen  "  series,  and  "  American  Men  of  Let- 


"  H.    H."   AND   OTHERS.  261 

ters  "  series  ;  and  scores  of  others  might  be  in 
cluded,  and  nearly  all  are  histories  of  the  lives  of 
Americans. 

What  treasures  await  you,  lie  ready  at  your 
hand  !  All  are  histories  of  the  lives  of  Americans, 
worthy  your  earnest  perusal,  full  of  interest,  in 
many  cases  having  a  charm  beyond  stories.  How 
rich  in  lessons  of  wisdom  and  statesmanship,  of 
culture  and  refinement,  of  goodness  and  Chris 
tian  experience,  of  benevolence  and  self-denial,  of 
true  living  and  high  thinking,  of  aspiration  and 
endeavor,  of  fidelity  to  truth,  to  country,  to 
science,  to  human  kind  are  the  pages  represented 
by  those  names ! 


JAMES    RUSSELL    LOWELL. 


XIV. 

JAMES   RUSSELL   LOWELL,   AND  OTHER   CRITICS. 

YOU  may  be  dismayed  at  the  word  "  critics  " 
and  shrink  from  the  phase  of  literature  we 
are  approaching,  for  hitherto  you  have  had  writers 
who  had  positive  attractions  for  you  —  historians, 
novelists,  essayists  —  and  the  present  word  sug 
gests  those  who  are  severe,  even  censorious,  and 
a  kind  of  writing  which  is  dry  and  prosy.  But  you 
will  be  agreeably  disappointed  and  will  take  an  al 
together  different  view  of  the  matter  when  you 
learn  that  a  critic  is  not  necessarily  a  fault-finder, 
even  if  that  be  the  general  opinion,  and  that  you 
are  to  look  upon  him  as  a  guide,  as  one  who  by 
insight,  good  judgment  and  training  is  qualified 
for  that  office. 

As  fair  a  definition  as  I  can  give  you  of  criti 
cism,  in  words,  is  that  it  is  the  interpretation  of 
265 


266      PLEASANT    AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

an  author.  It  is  a  department  in  literature,  and 
has  become  indispensable  as  a  help  and  a  dis 
cipline.  It  opens  your  eyes  to  merits  (and  faults 
also)  you  might  not  have  discerned  ;  it  is  an  edu 
cator  of  the  perceptions,  of  the  taste,  and  the 
weighing  and  comparing  faculties.  If  you  wish 
as  you  grow  older  to  understand  the  finer  shades 
of  meaning,  and  the  different  styles  by  which  dif 
ferent  writers  express  themselves,  to  be  apprecia 
tive  and  discriminating,  and  to  get  the  best  there 
is  out  of  a  book,  you  will  be  only  too  glad  to  have 
recourse  to  the  work  of  critics. 

For  one  instance,  when  the  time  arrives  for  you 
to  take  up  Shakespeare  in  earnest,  you  will  if  you 
are  wise  avail  yourself  of  all  the  helps  you  can 
command  from  those  who  have  made  him  a  special 
study.  If  you  can  have  access  to  the  prose  of 
Coleridge  you  will  enjoy  and  ponder  the  brief  but 
forceful  comments  he  makes  :  you  will  be  aided 
by  the  expository  touches  of  Hazlitt  in  his  Charac 
ters  of  Shakespeare's  Plays  ;  and  for  a  most  delight 
ful  analysis  of  many  of  the  heroines,  you  will 
hardly  find  anything  more  desirable  —  both  to 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  AND  OTHER  CRITICS.      267 

read  and  to  own  —  than  the  Characteristics  of 
Women  by  Mrs.  Anna  Jameson,  which  is  a  book 
that  should  be  in  every  girl's  library,  on  that 
special  shelf  where  stand  Sesame  and  Lilies,  and 
Crawford,  and  other  sweet  and  true  books  to  which 
your  attention  has  been  directed  in  these  two 
series  of  authors.  Criticisms  on  the  immortal 
dramatist  are  very  abundant,  and  every  year  adds 
to  the  number ;  but  for  something  that  goes  over 
the  whole  field,  you  cannot  do  better  than  choose 
the  "  Lectures  "  by  one  of  our  own  countrymen, 
Henry  Norman  Hudson,  a  Shakespearian  critic  of 
high  standing,  one  who  almost  deified  Shakes 
peare  .(which  is  his  chief  fault),  but  whose  work  is 
excellent  and  is  the  result  of  a  life-time  of  study. 
You  will  have  no  adequate  idea  how  the  beauty 
of  a  play  like  "  Tempest  "  or  of  the  character  of  a 
Miranda  or  Harmione  will  be  revealed  to  you  until 
you  see  them  in  the  flood  of  strong  light  which  a 
fine,  sympathetic,  cultured  critic  throws  upon 
them.  You  need  it,  and  will  be  grateful  for  it. 

Among  living  American  critics  the  name  that 
stands  highest  is  that  of  James  Russell  Lowell; 


268      PLEASANT  AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

in  liberal  scholarship,  keenness,  brilliance  and  fine 
judgment  no  one  surpasses  him.  The  results  of 
his  work  in  this  line  you  will  find  in  My  Study 
Windows,  and  in  the  two  series  called  Among  my 
Books.  It  is  impossible  to  give  you  any  concep 
tion  of  the  breadth  and  insight  of  these  papers. 
Your  most  profitable  way  of  reaching  them  will  be 
in  connection  with  the  subjects  they  treat  of. 
When  you  read  Shakespeare,  acquaint  yourself 
with  the  one  entitled  "  Shakespeare  Once  More," 
which  is  full  of  suggestions  about  the  influences  of 
the  age  on  that  dramatist,  and  his  fitness  for  the 
time  in  which  he  was  born,  also  about  the  struct 
ure  and  the  possibilities  of  their  own  noble  Eng 
lish  tongue  as  Shakespeare  used  it,  about  his 
adaptiveness  to  all  understandings,  because  he 
knew  human  nature  and  wrote  of  it  as  he  saw  it, 
as  it  was,  not  as  it  ought  to  be.  Much  food  for 
you  is  there  in  that  meaty  paper  of  Lowell's. 

And  when  you  are  ready  to  read  Wordsworth 
(as  ready  you  must  be  some  day),  read  the  paper 
on  him  ;  the  same  of  Milton  and  others.  That  on 
Dante  is  considered  the  most  thorough  and  by  far 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  AND  OTHER  CRITICS.       269 

the  ablest  on  the  subject  which  has  been  produced 
in  this  country.  Bear  it  in  mind  when  the  day 
arrives  for  Dante,  and  see  what  is  the  estimate  put 
upon  him  by  the  most  distinguished  man  of  let 
ters  we  have  among  us.  But  Milton  and  Words 
worth  come  before  the  Florentine.  In  company 
with  your  "  Paradise  Lost,"  have  before  you  what 
Lowell  says  of  its  grandeur  and  sweep,  like  this  : 

In  reading  "  Paradise  Lost  "  one  has  a  feeling  of  vastness. 
You  float  under  an  illimitable  sky,  brimmed  with  sunshine 
or  hung  with  constellations  ;  the  abysses  of  space  are  about 
you ;  you  hear  the  cadenced  surges  of  an  unseen  ocean ;  thun 
ders  mutter  round  the  horizon  ;  and  if  the  scene  change,  it 
is  with  an  elemental  movement  like  the  shifting  of  mighty 
winds.  .  .  He  was  founder  of  the  vague,  perhaps  I 
should  rather  say  the  indefinite,  where  more  is  meant  than 
meets  the  ear,  than  any  other  of  our  poets.  He  loved  epi 
thets  (like  old  and  far)  that  suggest  great  reaches,  whether 
of  space  or  time.  .  .  Milton's  respect  for  himself  and 
for  his  own  mind  and  its  movements  rises  well  nigh  to  vene 
ration.  .  .  There  is  no  such  unfailing  dignity  as  his. 

I  wish  I  could  have  space  to  quote  more,  but 
you  must  read  it,  and  as  you  do,  mark  the  splen- 


270      PLEASANT  AUTHORS   FOR   YOUNG   FOLKS. 

did  structure  of  Lowell's  sentences  and  what  a 
power  words  are  in  his  hands,  how  flexible  is  our 
language  when  a  master  of  prose  makes  use  of  it. 
And  here,  in  his  paper  on  Keats,  is  something  on 
this  very  subject ;  most  timely  : 

There  is  a  great  deal  more  than  is  commonly  supposed  in 
this  choice  of  words.  Men's  thoughts  and  opinions  are  in 
a  great  degree  vassals  of  him  who  invents  a  new  phrase  or 
re-applies  an  old  epithet.  The  thought  of  feeling  a  thousand 
times  repeated  becomes  his  at  last  who  utters  it  best.  .  .  As 
soon  as  we  have  discovered  the  word  for  our  joy  or  sorrow 
we  are  no  longer  its  serfs,  but  its  lords. 

That  sentence  which  I  have  emphazised  reveals 
the  secret  of  a  writer's  power.  Ponder  it.  You 
will  find  these  three  volumes  full  of  choice  bits  of 
wisdom  precious  to  one  who  loves  our  English 
tongue  and  delights  in  the  beauty  and  strength  of 
prose.  What  revelations  we  get  of  the  penman's 
craft,  of  the  guild  of  writers,  of  the  workmen  like 
Chaucer  and  Spenser !  What  fine,  careful  studies 
of  the  work  of  a  single  poet,  like  Wordsworth ! 
The  influences  that  made  him  what  he  was  are 
sharply  defined,  his  merits,  and  his  faults,  even 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  AND  OTHER  CRITICS.       271 

the  wearisome  poems,  but  then,  says  Lowell,  in 
spite  of  the  things  that  detract  from  his  poetic 
excellence  and  symmetry  : 

With  what  splendors  as  of  mountain-sunsets  are  we  re 
warded  !  What  golden  rounds  of  verse  do  we  not  see  stretch 
ing  heavenward  with  angels  ascending  and  descending ! 
Wrhat  haunting  harmonies  hover  around  us  deep  and  eternal 
like  the  undying  barytone  of  the  sea !  and  if  we  are  com 
pelled  to  fare  through  sands  and  desert  wildernesses,  how 
often  do  we  not  hear  airy  shapes  that  syllable  our  names 
with  a  startling  personal  appeal  to  our  highest  conscious 
ness  and  our  noblest  aspiration  such  as  we  wait  for  in  vain 
in  any  other  poetl 

Read  this,  and  from  page  240  on  to  the  close  of 
the  paper,  and  you  will  get  as  just  an  estimate  of 
Wordsworth  as  can  be  anywhere  found  in  the  same 
space,  if  indeed  it  be  not  clearer,  wiser,  fairer  as 
well  as  more  sympathetic  than  from  any  other 
critic.  And  the  glow  there  is  about  Lowell's  prose 
—  how  soon  you  will  see  and  feel  it !  All  the 
ripeness  of  his  scholarship  is  back  of  it,  all  his 
years  of  training  are  in  it.  No  man  is  born  a 
writer  like  that ;  nor  does  the  skill  come  without 


272       PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

painstaking  and  an  absorption  of  all  that  is  best  in 
the  older  writers.  When  you  consider  this,  you 
will  begin  to  appreciate  the  value  to  you  of  one 
who  brings  to  his  pleasant  task  not  only  keenness 
of  perception,  but  the  result  of  his  life's  reading 
and  work.  The  papers  of  most  interest  to  you  are 
"  Carlyle,"  "  Abraham  Lincoln,"  and  "  Chaucer," 
in  My  Study  Windows,  "  Shakespeare  once  more  " 
in  the  first  series  of  Among  my  Books,  and  "  Spen 
ser,"  "Wordsworth,"  "Milton,"  and  "Keats,"  in 
the  second  series :  there  is  also  in  the  first  vol 
ume  named  a  criticism  of  Thoreau  which  gives 
rather  an  adverse  view  of  him. 

Let  me  refer  you  for  some  knowledge  (which 
you  ought  to  have)  of  a  man  who  gave  the  fruit  of 
his  scholarship  to  newspaper  literature  in  some  of 
the  ablest  criticism  our  country  has  known,  to  the 
biography  of  the  late  George  Ripley  in  the 
"American  Men  of  Letters"  series.  His  work 
you  cannot  avail  yourself  of,  but  by  reading  this 
record  of  what  he  did,  you  can  at  least  see  the  im 
portance  of  the  department  we  are  considering, 
and  how  he  dignified  it.  See  his  explanation  to  a 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  AND  OTHER  CRITICS.      273 

friend  of  the  reason  for  the  ease  with  which  in  the 
later  years  of  his  life  he  "  threw  off  "  an  article  : 
"  It  is  not  wonderful  seeing  that  I  have  been  fifty 
years  about  it ;  "  and  this  is  quoted  from  one  of 
his  reviews  in  illustration  of  his  own  literary  prin 
ciples  :  "  He  who  does  not  write  as  well  as  he  can 
on  every  occasion  will  soon  form  the  habit  of  not 
writing  well  at  all."  Mr.  Ripley  was  connected 
with  Harper's  Magazine  for  thirty  years,  a  portion 
of  the  time  as  writer  of  literary  reviews,  then  as  a 
reader  of  manuscripts  on  all  subjects,  to  which  he 
gave  his  careful  attention,  without  prejudice  or 
favoritism,  but  always  in  the  interests  of  literature, 
and  then  submitted  his  opinion.  These  "opin 
ions,"  terse,  deliberately  weighed  and  conscien 
tious,  are  said  by  the  biographer  to  show  better 
his  "  extraordinary  mental  force  "  than  even  his 
elaborate  reviews. 

The  objection  of  inaccessibility  to  the  results  of 
such  faithful  work  does  not  apply  to  another  man 
eminent  in  this  field  who  has  also  lately  died, 
Edwin  Percy  Whipple.  His  books  are  in  public 
libraries,  and  most  of  them  have  been  there  a  long 


274      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YO'JNG    FOLKS. 

enough  time  to  have  become  well  known  and  to 
have  been  well  read.  In  all,  his  collected  essays, 
criticisms  and  lectures  make  six  volumes.  He 
was  a  clear  thinker  and  able  writer,  and  has  the 
distinction  of  being  one  of  the  earliest  to  give  his 
energies  to  this  kind  of  writing  and  to  raise  the 
tone  of  culture  in  America.  In  the  first  volume  of 
his  Essays  and  Reviews  he  takes  a  survey  of  the 
"Poets  and  Poetry  of  America,"  of  "English 
Poets  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  "  —  subjects  to 
which  we  shall  presently  come  in  the  later  books 
of  Stedman.  In  that  volume  you  will  find  a  nota 
ble  paper  on  Daniel  Webster,  prepared  on  occasion 
of  the  publication  of  the  great  statesman's  speeches 
and  forensic  arguments.  You  may  be  surprised 
to  see  Webster  ranked  among  writers,  but  Whipple 
considers  him  one  of  the  masters  of  the  English 
language,  and  what  he  says  you  must  not  fail  to 
read.  A  passage  or  two  I  will  quote  : 

In  all  the  characteristics  of  great  literary  performances 
they  are  fully  equal  to  many  works  which  have  stood  the 
test  of  ages.  .  .  Every  great  writer  has  a  style  of  his 
own,  constructed  according  to  the  character  of  his  mind  and 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  AND  OTHER  CRITICS.       271; 

disposition.  The  style  of  Mr.  Webster  has  great  merit,  not 
only  for  its  vigor,  clearness  and  compression,  but  for  the 
broad  impress  it  bears  of  the  writer's  nature.  It  owes  noth 
ing  to  the  usual  tricks  of  rhetoric,  but  seems  the  enforced 
utterance  of  his  intellect,  and  is  eminently  Wtbsterian.  There 
is  a  granite-like  strength  in  its  construction.  .  .  Words 
in  his  mind  are  not  masters,  but  instruments.  They  seem 
selected,  or  rather  clutched,  by  the  faculty  or  feeling  they 
serve.  .  .  He  bends  language  into  the  shape  of  his 
thought,  he  never  accommodates  his  thought  to  his  language. 
The  grave,  high,  earnest  nature  of  the  man  looks  out  upon 
us  from  his  well-knit,  massive,  compact  sentences.  .  . 
There  is  a  tough,  sinewy  strength  in  his  diction  which  gives 
it  almost  muscular  power  in  forcing  its  way  to  the  heart  and 
understanding.  Occasionally  his  words  are  of  that  kind 
which  are  called  "  half-battles,  stronger  than  most  men's 
deeds."  In  the  course  of  an  abstract  discussion,  or  a  clear 
statement,  he  will  throw  in  a  sentence  which  almost  makes 
us  spring  to  our  feet. 

In  his  "  English  Poets  of  the  Nineteenth  Cen 
tury  "  notice  the  tribute  he  pays  to  books,  be 
ginning  "  Who  shall  estimate  what  vast  stores  of 
happiness  and  improvement  the  domain  of  im 
agination  has  revealed  to  us  ?  "  Consider  his  defi 
nition  of  what  poetry  is,  and  compare  it  with 


276      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

Emerson's  to  which  your  attention  was  directed 
in  the  paper  on  that  author. 

It  is  well,  and  likewise  interesting,  to  get  the 
opinions  of  different  critics  on  the  same  subject, 
and  thereby  avoid  the  danger  of  having  a  one 
sided  view.  By  all  means  read  Stedman's  two 
books,  Victorian  Poets  and  Poetry  of  America ;  a 
part  of  the  ground,  but  only  a  small  part  has  been 
gone  over  by  other  critics.  Whipple's  most  elab 
orate  single  volume  is  on  the  Elizabethan  poets 
only ;  Lowell's  single  papers  are  on  selected 
authors  from  Chaucer  to  Keats ;  Stedman  gives 
"  a  historical  review  of  the  course  of  British  poetry 
during  the  present  reign,"  with  literary  and  bio 
graphical  criticisms,  and  you  can  judge  of  the 
compass  from  the  fact  that  there  are  one  hundred 
and  fifty  British  poets  who  are  named  for  more  or 
less  criticism.  For  a  concise  and  well-defined  ac 
count  you  will  find  nothing  to  take  its  place,  and 
the  classification  and  arrangement,  with  the  side 
notes,  are  such  as  to  be  of  vast  help  to  the  under 
standing  of  the  conditions  and  the  individuals. 
While  reading  his  comments  on  any  special  poem 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  AND  OTHER  CRITICS.       277 

it  will  be  greatly  to  your  advantage  to  make  your 
self  thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  poem  itself ; 
that  is  the  true  moment  and  opportunity  for  so 
doing  and  for  gaining  intelligent  knowledge  which 
under  such  circumstances  will  be  likely  to  stay  by 
you,  and  will  be  of  more  worth  to  you  than  weeks 
of  miscellaneous,  disconnected  and  superficial  read 
ing  of  the  poets. 

In  his  volume  on  American  poets,  Stedman  re 
views  the  whole  ground  from  the  beginning  down 
to  the  poets  whose  verse  appears  from  week  to 
week  in  our  periodicals,  and  he  also  devotes  nine 
chapters  to  certain  leading  poets,  one  of  whom  is 
Lowell,  and  Lowell's  prose,  even  his  criticisms, . 
the  very  ones  we  have  been  considering  are  here 
made  subjects  for  this  other  critic's  comment,  and 
very  interesting  reading  it  is  for  you.  He  says  : 

But  one  must  spend  time  in  gathering  knowledge  to  give 
it  out  richly,  and  few  comprehend  what  goes  to  a  page  of 
Lowell's  manuscript.  The  page  itself,  were  it  a  letter  or 
press-report,  could  be  written  in  a  quarter-hour ;  but  sup 
pose  it  represents,  as  in  one  of  his  greater  essays,  the  re 
sult  of  prolonged  studies  —  the  reading,  indexing,  formulat- 


278       PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR    YOUNG    FOLKS. 

ing  works  in  various  languages,  upon  his  shelves  or  in  the 
Harvard  library?  Of  all  this  he  gives  the  ultimate  quin 
tessence,  a  distillation  fragrant  with  his  own  genius.  Who 
can  estimate  the  toil  of  such  work  ? 

Again  : 

Certainly  Lowell  is  a  most  suggestive  essayist.  He  sets 
us  a-thinking,  and,  after  a  stretch  of  comment,  halts  in  by 
paths,  or  enlivens  us  with  his  sudden  wit.  He  has  the  in 
tellect,  held  to  be  a  mark  of  greatness,  that  "  puts  in  motion 
the  intellect  of  others." 

Besides  the  class  of  book  and  solitary  articles 
strictly  called  criticism  (which  includes  a  moderate 
list  of  names  there  is  not  space  for,  among  them 
Margaret  Fuller),  there  is  a  new  form  of  half- 
descriptive,  half-critical  work  which  comes  under 
the  general  title  of  "  studies." 

Thus  Higginson  has  twelve  very  pleasing  papers 
under  the  head  of  Short  Studies  of  American  Au 
thors  :  G.  P.  Lathrop  has  A  Study  of  Hawthorne, 
George  Willis  Cooke  has  George  Eliot ;  A  Critical 
Study  of  her  Life,  Writings  and  Philosophy :  other 
books  are  within  the  same  plan  of  work  like  Abba 
Goold  Woolson's  George  Eliot  and  her  Heroines. 


JAMES  RUSSELL  LOWELL,  AND  OTHER  CRITICS.       279 

When  you  come,  some  day,  to  a  careful  reading  of 
George  Eliot's  novels,  take  with  them  these  two 
volumes  by  American  writers  for  help  towards  an 
estimate  of  the  foremost  woman  writer  of  English 
prose  which  this  century  has  produced.  Cooke's 
is  an  exposition  of  her  stories  with  an  analysis  of 
each  with  extracts,  is  reasonably  fair  and  more 
sympathetic  than  Mrs.  Woolson's ;  while  her  study, 
from  a  different  stand-point,  directs  your  thought 
especially  to  certain  failures  and  lacks  in  the  great 
novelist. 

Of  biographical  criticism  there  are  such  books 
as  Cooke's  on  Emerson,  Francis  H.  Underwood's 
three,  on  Whittier,  Longfellow  and  Lowell,  and 
many  others.  All  such  are  of  advantage  in  your 
reading  of  best  authors.  Also  books  which  have 
literature  in  general  for  their  theme,  like  Henry 
Reed's  Lectures  on  English  Literature,  which,  though 
they  do  not  come  strictly  within  the  present 
American  plan,  I  cannot  refrain  from  commend 
ing  to  you  on  account  of  the  lovely,  teachable 
spirit  manifested  all  through  them.  He  was  Pro 
fessor  of  English  Literature  and  Rhetoric  in  the 


280      PLEASANT   AUTHORS    FOR   YOUNG    FOLKS. 

University  of  Pennsylvania,  and  was  lost  at  sea  on 
his  return  from  Europe  in  1854.  He  was  a  gentle, 
refined  man  with  a  most  reverent  love  for  books  ; 
he  valued  the  guidance  of  any  who  had  shown 
him  where  the  best  was  to  be  found,  and  he  rec 
ognized  the  fact  that  many  though  surrounded  by 
books  do  not  know  how  to  use  them.  He  ad 
vised  only  the  sweet  and  sound,  that  which  should 
be  a  means  of  culture,  developing  all  that  is  best 
in  man  and  woman.  To  him  the  noble  English 
language  had  a  sanctity  and  dignity  of  its  own 
which  he  would  not  have  trifled  with  :  he  would 
not  have  it  brought  down,  or  in  any  way  debased. 
Let  such  a  thought  be  with  you  as  you  grow  up 
with  a  love  of  books,  and  you  will  have  a  true  ap 
preciation  not  only  of  the  strength  of  the  Saxon 
idioms  and  their  grand  attributes  and  possibilities 
in  the  hands  of  a  master,  but  you  will  know  how 
to  choose  the  sweet  kernels  of  truth,  and  learn  to 
loathe  the  evil  and  to  distrust  everything  which 
confuses  the  border  lines  between  right  and  wrong. 


Classified  List.  —  Religious. 


GOOD  FIGHT  (A);  or,  George  Dana  Boardman  and  AM 
Burman  Mission.  By  REV.  A.  KING.  Large  i6mo,  $i  25. 

GOSPEL  LIFE  OF  JESUS  (The).  By  L.  A.  DAVIJB. 
i6mo,  $1.25. 

HELPFUL  THOUGHTS  FOR  YOUNG  MEN.    By 
T.  D.  WOOLSEY,  D.  D.,  LL.  D.     i6mo,  60  cents. 
The  writer  knows  and  understands  the  class  to  whom  he  speaks, 

and  his  words  are  full  of  practical  wisdom. 

LIVING     TRUTHS.       (Spare     Minute     Series).       From 
CHARLES  KINGSLBY.     Edited  by  E.  E.  BROWN,  with  an  Intro 
duction  by  W.  D.  Howells.     12010.  cloth,  gilt  top,  $1.00. 
One  cannot  read  it  without  feeling  the  brotherhood  of  a  soul 

that  has  suffered,  and  has  learned  through  suffering  that  there  is 

but  one  great  thing  for  men  to  do  in  this  world,  and  that  is  to  do 

right.  —  Literary  News. 

LORD'S  DAY  RESCUED  (The).  By  ALEXANDER  SES 
SIONS,  with  Introduction  by  Henry  M.  Dexter,  D.  D.  i6mo, 
cloth,  60  cents. 

MEN  OF  MARK ;  or,  Heroes  of  Church  History.  By  WIL 
LIAM  MARSHALL,  D.D.  121110,  $1.25. 

NOT  OF  MAN,  BUT  OF  GOD.    The  last  work  of  R«v. 
J.  M.  MANNING,  D.D.,  late  pastor  of  the  Old  South  Congrega 
tional  Church.     i2mo,  cloth,  $1.25. 
Will  charm  the  minds  and  win  the  hearts  of  all. 

PERFECT  MAN  (The);  or,  Jesus  an  Example  of  Godly 
Life.  By  REV.  HARRY  JONES.  $1.00. 

PRAYER  MEETING  AND  ITS  IMPROVEMENT 
(The).     By  REV.  LEWIS  O.  THOMPSON.     i6mo,  $1.25. 
An   admirable  pastoral  help,   full  of   the   wisest   counsel.     It 

should  be  in  the  hands  of  every  minister  in  whose  parish  dull 

prayer  meetings  are  spreading  dry  rot. 
The  book  will  be  a  real  help  to  pastor  and  people.  —  Chicagf 

Inter-Ocean. 


Classified  List.  —  Poetry. 


THROUGH  THE  YEAR  WITH  THE  POETS.— 
December,  January,  February,  March,  April, 
May.     Arranged  and  compiled  by  OSCAR  FAY  ADAMS.     Each 
75  cents. 
The  cream  of  English  literature,  past  and  current,  has  been 

skimmed  with  a  judicious  and  appreciative  hand.  —  Boston  Tran- 

script. 

WAIFS  AND  THEIR  AUTHORS.  By  A.  A.  HOP 
KINS.  A  collection  of  poems  many  of  which  are  now  for  the 
first  time  published  with  the  names  of  the  authors.  Quarto, 
cloth,  gilt,  $2.00;  quarto,  full  gilt,  gilt  edges,  $2.50. 

WHEN  I  WAS  A  CHILD.    By  ERNEST  W.  SHURTLKFK. 
Illustrated,  $1.00. 
A  simple,  graceful  poem,  fresh  with  memories  of  school  and 

vacation  days,  of  games  and  sports  in   the   country.  —  Chicago 

A  dvance. 

WHILE      SHEPHERDS      WATCHED      THEIR 
FLOCKS  BY  NIGHT.    Illustrated,  $2.50. 
Nothing  more  exquisite  in  the  way  of  a  presentation  book.  — 

B.  B.  Bulletin. 

WOMAN  IN  SACRED  SONG.    Compiled  and  edited 
by  MRS.  GEORGE  CLINTON  SMITH.     With  an  introduction  by 
Frances  E.  Willard.     Illustrated.  $3.50. 
Tt  gives  a  very  full  representation  of  the  contributions  of  woman 

to  sacred  song,  though  of  course  the  main  bulk  of  this  has  been  in 

modern  times.  — Illustrated  Weekly. 

YOUNG  FOLKS'  POETRY.  By  A.  P.  and  M.  T. 
FOLSOM.  A  choice  selection  of  poems.  i6mo,  $1.00. 

YOUNG  FOLKS'  SPEAKER.  A  collection  of  Prose 
and  Poetry  for  Declamations,  Recitations  and  Elocutionary 
Exercises.  Selected  and  arranged  by  CARRIK  ADBLAIDB 
COOKE.  iamo,  cloth,  illustrated,  $1.00. 

It  deserves  to  become  a  standard  in  the  schools  of  the  country- 
—  B.  B.  Bulletin. 


Classified  List.  —  Pansy. 


THE  PANSY  BOOKS. 

There  are  substantial  reasons  for  the  great  popularity  of  the 
*  Pansy  Books,"  and  foremost  among  these  is  their  truth  to  nature 
and  to  life.  The  genuineness  of  the  types  of  character  which 
they  portray  is  indeed  remarkable. 

"  Her  stories  move  alternately  to  laughter  and  tears."    ... 
"  Brimful  of  the  sweetness  of  evangelical  religion."      ... 
"  Girl  life  and  character  portrayed  with  rare  power."    ... 
"  Too  much  cannot  be  said  of  the  insight  given  into  the  true  way 
of  studying  and  using  the  word  of  God."    .    .     .     These  are  a 
few  quotations  from  words    of  praise  everywhere  spoken.     Th« 
"  Pansy  Books  "  may  be  purchased  by  any  Sunday-school  without 
hesitation  as  to  their  character  or  acceptability. 

Each  volume  unto,  $1.50. 

Chautauqua  Girls  at  Home.  Links  in  Rebecca's  Life. 

Christie's  Christmas.  Mrs.  Solomon  Smith  Looking  On. 

Divers  Women.  Modern  Prophets. 

Echoing  and  Re-echoing.  Man  of  the  House  (The). 

Endless  Chain  (An).  New  Graft  on  the  Family  Tree  (A) 

Ester  Ried.  One  Commonplace  Day. 

Ester  Ried  Yet  Speaking.  Pocket  Measure  (The). 

Four  Girls  at  Chautauqua.  Ruth  Erskine's  Crosses. 

From  different  Standpoints.  Randolphs  (The). 

Hall  in  the  Grove  (The).  Sidney  Martin's  Christmas. 

Household  Puzzles.  Those  Boys. 

Interrupted.  Three  People. 

Julia  Ried.  Tip  Lewis  and  his  Lamp. 

King's  Daughter  (The).  Wise  and  Otherwise. 


Classified  List.  — Birthday. 


BIRTHDAY. 

ARNOLD  BIRTHDAY  BOOK.      With  many  original 

Poems.     Cloth,  gilt,  $1.00 ;  seal,  $2.50. 

The  editors  are  the  two  daughters  of  the  poet,  who  have  gona 
over  the  various  works  of  their  father  with  a  judicious,  as  well  as  a 
loving  hand,  and  have  added  a  collection  of  gems  worthy  of  the 
publisher's  setting.  — Interior,  Chicago. 

LITTLE  FOLKS'  BIRTHDAY  BOOK.    Arranged  by 
AMANDA  B.  HARRIS.    Twelve  full-page  illustrations  in  color, 
and  pictures  for  every  day.     Square  i8mo,  cloth,  tinted  edges, 
$1.00. 
With  each  rhyme  is  a  childish  picture,  some  of  them  being  very 

clever,  the  whole  bound  ?r>  a  very  artistic  cover,  and  one  calculated 
to  amuse  and  please  children.  —  Churchman. 

POETS'  BIRTHDAY  BOOK  (The).  Arranged  by 
AMANDA  B.  HARRIS,  with  original  poems  for  each  month  by 
Longfellow,  Whittier,  Will  Carleton  and  others.  Twenty-four 
full-page  illustrations,  square  iSino,  cloth,  tinted  edges,  $1.00; 
seal,  $2.50. 
You  cannot  select  anything  prettier  for  a  gift  book.  —  Herald 

of  Truth. 

SCRIPTURE  BIRTHDAY  BOOK.  i8mo,  illustrated, 
cloth,  $1.00;  seal,  $2  50. 

SHAKESPEARE  BIRTHDAY  BOOK.  Wirti  por 
trait  and  twelve  illustrations.  i8mo,  cloth,  $1.00;  seal,  $2.50. 
This  exquisite  little  birthday  book  cannot  help  meeting  with 

Immediate  and  universal  favor.  —  B.  B.  Bulletin. 

WEDDING  DAY  BOOK.  Edited  by  KATHERINK  Lra 
BATES,  with  original  illustrations  by  George  F.  Barnes.  Small 
quarto,  extra  cloth,  bevelled,  gilt  edges,  $1.25. 


Classified  List.  —  Standard  Miscellaneous. 

HOLD  UP  YOUR  HEADS,  GIRLS !    By  ANNIE  H. 

RYDER.     $r.oo. 

It  is  a  book  for  study,  for  companionship,  and  the  girl  who  read* 
it  thoughtfully  and  with  an  intent  to  profit  by  it  will  get  more  real 
help  and  good  from  it  than  from  a  term  at  the  best  boarding-school 
in  the  country.  —  Boston  Transcript. 

HONOR  BRIGHT  (the  story  of).    By  CHARLES  R.  TAL, 

HOT,  author  of  Royal  Lowrie.     i2mo,  illustrated,  $1.25. 

A  charming  story  full  of  intense  life. 
HOW  TO  LEARN  AND  EARN.    Half  Hours  in  some 

Helpful  Schools.     By  American  authors.     Ona  hundred  original 

illustrations,     izmo,  extra  cloth,  $1.50. 

The  book  treats  largely  of  public  institutions,  training  schools, 
etc.,  and  shows  what  maybe  accomplished  by  patient  concentrated 
effort.  — Farm  and  Fireside. 
HOW  WE  ARE  GOVERNED.    By  ANNA  LAURKNS 

DAWKS.     i2mo,  $1.50. 

An  explanation  of  the  constitution  and  government  of  the 
United  States,  national,  State,  and  local. 

A  concise,  systematic,  and  complete  study  of  the  great  principles 
which  underlie  the  National  existence.  —  Chicago  Inter-Ocean. 

IN  LEISLER'S  TIMES.     A  story-study  of  Knickerbocker 

New  York.     By  E.  S.  Brooks.     With  twenty-four  drawings  by 

W.  T.  Smedley.    $1.50. 

Though  designedly  for  young  folks'  reading,  this  volume  is  a 
very  careful  and  minute  study  of  a  hitherto  half-obscured  and 
neglected  phase  of  American  history,  and  will  be  given  a  perma 
nent  place  in  historical  literature.  — American  Bookseller. 
JOSEPHUS  FLAVIUS,  (the  Works  of  ).    A  new 

edition  of  William  Whiston's  Famous  Translations.     8vo,  cloth, 

gilt,  loo  illustrations,  $3.00.     Household  Edition.     121110,  cloth, 

gilt  top,  illustrated,  $2.00. 

This  edition  is  admirable  and  will  make  new  friends  for  the  esuy 
and  conceited  old  chronicler.  —  B.  B.  Bulletin. 


Classified  List.  —  Standard  Miscellaneous, 

THE  TRIPLE  "  E."     By  MRS.    S.  R.   GRAHAM  CLARK. 

I2rao,  paper,  illustrated,  25  cts.     Cloth,  $1.50. 

It  cannot  failto  make  a  strong  impression  on  the  minds  of  those 

who  read  it.  —  B.  B.  Bulletin. 

THUCYDIDES.  Translated  into  English  with  marginal 
analysis  and  index.  By  B.  JOWETT,  M.  A.,  Master  of  Balliol 
College,  Professor  of  Greek  in  the  University  of  Oxford,  Doc 
tor  of  Theology  in  the  University  of  Leyden.  Edited  with 
introduction  to  American  edition  by  Andrew  P.  Peabody,  D.  D. 
LL.  D.  8vo,  $3.50.  Half  calf,  $6.00. 

WARLOCK    O'    GLENWARLOCK.      By  GKORGB 

MACDONALD.      i2mo,  fully  illustrated,  $1.50. 
At  his  best,  there  are  few  contemporary  novelists  so  well  worth 
reading  as  MacDonald.  — Boston  Journal. 

WEIGHED  AND  WANTING.  By  GEORGE  MACDON 
ALD.  I2mo,  cloth,  $1.50. 

WHAT'S  MINE'S  MINE.      By  GEORGE  MACPONALD. 

ft. So- 
Let  all  who  enjoy  a  book  full  of  fire  and  life  and  purpose  read 

this  capital  story.  —  Woman's  Journal. 

WILD      FLOWERS,      AND      WHERE      THEY 
GROW.       By    AMANDA    B.    HARRIS.      8vo,    extra  cloth, 
beautifully  bound,  gilt  edges,  $3.00. 
It  is  a  book  in  which   all  true  lovers  of  nature  will  delight. 

—  B.  B.  Bulletin, 

WONDER  STORIES  OF  SCIENCE.      Uniform  with 

"  Plucky  Boys,"  izmo,  cloth,  $1.50. 

To  improve  as  well  as  to  amuee  young  people  is  the  object  of 
these  twenty-one  sketches,  and  they  fill  this  purpose  wonderfully 
well.  —  Texas  Siftings. 

WITHIN  THE  SHADOW.     By  DOROTHY  HOLROYD. 

121110,  cloth,  $1.25. 

"  The  author  has  skill  in  invention  with  the  purest  scnrimen* 
»nd  good  natural  style."  —  Boston  Globe. 


BOOKS  FOR  BOYS. 

AMONG   THE   LIGHTHOUSES.    By  MARY  BKADFOMB 
CROWNINSHIELD,  wife   of  Commander  Crowninshield.     Finely  illustrated 
from  photographs  and  original  drawings.     Extra  cloth,  quarto,  $2.  <yO. 
An  attractive  book  for  boys,  giving  the  account  of  an  actual  trip  along  the 

coast  of  Maine  by  a  lighthouse  inspector  with  two  wide  awake  boys  in  charge. 

The  visits  to  the   numerous  lighthouses  not  only  teem  with  incident,  but 

abound  in  information  that  will  interest  every  one. 

BOYS'  HEROES.     By  EDWARD  EVKRBTT  HALB.    Reading  Union 

Library.     i6mo,  illustrated,  cloth,  jfi.oo. 

Twelve  chapters  containing  the  story  told  in  Dr.  Hale's  characteristic  stylo, 
of  a  dozen  characters  famed  in  history  as  worthy  to  bear  the  title  of  heroes, 
and  the  story  of  whose  deeds  and  lives  possesses  a  special  interest  for  boys. 

PLUCKY  BOYS.     Business  Boys'  Library.     By  the  author  of  "  Joh» 

Halifax,  Gentleman,"  and  other  authors.     Ji.oo. 

"  A  pound  of  pluck  is  worth  a  ton  of  luck."  —  President  Garfitld.  Spirited 
narratives  of  boys  who  have  conquered  obstacles  and  become  successful  busi 
ness  men  ;  or  of  other  young  fellows  who  have  shown  fearlessness  and  "  fight  " 
in  situations  of  danger. 

A  BOY'S  WORKSHOP.    By  A  BOY  AND  His  FRIENDS.    Ji.oo. 

Just  the  book  for  boys  taking  their  first  lesson  in  the  use  of  tools.  All  sort* 
of  practical  suggestions  and  sound  advice,  with  valuable  illustrations  fill  the 
volume. 

BOY  LIFE  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  NAVY.    By  H.  H. 

CLARK.     121110,  illustrated,  £1.50. 

If  there  is  anything  in  the  way  of  human  attire  which  more  than  any  other 
commands  the  admiration  and  stirs  the  enthusiasm  of  the  average  boy  of  what 
ever  nation,  it  is  the  trim  uniform  and  shining  buttons  that  distinguish  th« 
jolly  lads  of  the  "  Navy."  In  this  graphically  written  and  wonderfully  enter 
taining  volume,  boy  life  in  the  Navy  of  the  United  States  is  described  by  a 
&aval  officer,  in  a  manner  which  cannot  fail  to  satisfy  the  boys. 


SUCCESS  IS  WON.  By  MRS.  SARAH  K.  BOLTON.  $1.00. 
This  is  the  best  of  the  recent  books  of  this  popular  class  of  biography  ;  all 
its  "  successful  men  "  are  Americans,  and  with  two  or  three  exceptions  they 
are  living  and  in  the  full  tide  of  business  and  power.  In  each  case,  the  facts 
have  been  furnished  to  the  author  by  the  subject  of  the  biography,  or  by  fam 
ily  friends  ;  and  Mrs.  Bolton  has  chosen  from  this  authentic  material  those 
incidents  which  most  fully  illustrate  the  successive  steps  and  the_  ruling  princi 
ples,  by  which  success  has  been  gained.  A  portrait  accompanies  each  biog 
raphy. 

STORIES  OP  DANGER  AND  ADVENTURE.    By  Ross  G. 

KINGSLEY,  B.  P.  SHILLABER,  FREDERIC  SCHWATKA  and  others.    $1.25. 

Fascinating  stones  of  thrilling  incidents  in  all  sorts  of  places  and  with  all 
kinds  of  people.  .  Very  fully  illustrated. 

WONDER  STORIES  OF   TRAVEL.     By  ELIOT  McCoRMior, 
ERNEST  INCERSOLL,  E.  E.  BROWN,  DAVID  KBR  and  others.     Fully  illus 
trated.    1  1.  50. 
From  the  opening  story,  "  A  Boy's  Race  with  General  Grant  at  Ephesus," 

to  the  last,  "  A  Child  in  Florence,"  this  book  is  full  of  stir  and  interest. 

Indian,  Italian,  Chinese,  German,   English,  Scotch,  French,  Arabian  and 

Egyptian  scenes  and  people  are  described,  and  there  is  such  a  {east  of  good 

things  one  hardly  knows  which  to  choose  first. 


BOOKS  FOR  GIRLS. 

HOLD  UP  YOUR  HEADS,  GIRLS!  By  ANNIK'H.  RYDER.  Ji.oa. 
One  of  the  brightest,  breeziest  books  for  girls  ever  written ;  as  sweet  and 
wholesome  as  the  breath  of  clover  on  a  clear  June  morning,  and  as  full  of  life 
and  inspiration  as  a  trumpet  call.  The  writer,  a  popular  teacher,  speaks  of 
what  she  knows,  and  has  put  her  own  magnetism  into  these  little  plain,  sensi 
ble,  earnest  talks,  and  the  girls  will  read  them  and  be  thrilled  by  them  as  by  a 
personal  presence. 

A  NEW  DEPARTURE  FOR  GIRLS.    By  MARGARET  SIDNKT. 

75  cents. 

In  this  bright  little  story,  we  see  what  may  be  really  done  in  the  way  of  self- 
support  by  young  women  of  sturdy  independence  and  courage,  with  no  false 
pnde  to  deter  them  from  taking  up  the  homely  work  which  they  are  capable 
of  doing.  It  will  give  an  incentive  to  many  a  baffled,  discouraged  girl  who 
has  failed  from  trying  to  work  in  the  old  ruts. 
HOW  THEY  LEARNED  HOUSEWORK.  By  CHRISTINA 

GOODWIN.    75  cents. 

Four  merry  schoolgirls  during  vacation  time  are  inducted  into  the  mysteries 
of  chamber-work,  cooking,  washing,  ironing,  pntting  up  preserves  and  cutting 
and  making  underclothes,  all  under  the  careful  supervision  of  one  of  the  moth 
ers.  The  whole  thing  is  made  attractive  for  them  in  a  way  that  is  simply  cap 
tivating,  and  the  story  of  their  experiment  is  full  of  interest 
A  GIRL'S  ROOM.  With  plans  and  designs  for  work  upstairs  and 

down,  and  entertainments  for  herself  and  friends.    By  SOME  FRIENDS  or 

THE  GIRLS,    gi.oo. 

This  dainty  volume  not  only  shows  girls  how  to  make  their  rooms  eosey  and 
attractive  at  small  trouble  and  expense,  but  also  how  to  pass  a  social  evening 
with  various  games,  and  to  prepare  many  pretty  and  useful  articles  for  them 
selves  and  friends. 

CHRISTIE'S    CHRISTMAS.    By  PANSY.     i2mo,  fully  illustrated, 

|i.5°- 

Christie  is  one  of  those  delightfully  life-like,  naive  and  interesting  charac 
ters  which  no  one  so  well  as  Pansy  can  portray,  and  in  the  study  of  which 
every  reader  will  find  delight  and  profit. 

ANNA  MARIA'S  HOUSEKEEPING.    By  MRS.  S.  D.  POWKR. 

i6mo,  extra  cloth,  §1.00. 

Articles  on  household  matters,  written  in  a  clear,  fascinating  style  out  ol 
the  experience  of  a  writer  who  knows  whereof  she  speaks.  Every  girl  and 
young  housekeeper  should  own  a  copy. 

BRAVE  GIRLS.    By  MARY  HARTWELL  CATHERWOOD,  NORA  PERRY, 

MRS.  JOHN  SHERWOOD  and  others.    $1.50. 

Here  are  deeds  of  stirring  adventure  and  peril,  and  quiet  heroism  no  less 
brave,  to  incite  girls  to  be  faithful  and  fearless,  strong  and  true  to  the  right. 

NEW  EVERY  MORNING :    Selections  of  Readings  for 

Girls.    By  ANNIE  H.  RYDER.    Ji.oo. 

This  is  just  such  a  book  as  one  would  expect  from  the  popular  author  of 
"  Hold  up  your  Heads,  Girls !  "  and  willbe  no  less  a  favorite.  The  selection* 
we  all  choice  and  apprporiate,  and  will  be  eagerly  read  each  morning  by  th« 
happy  owners. 


25717 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FACILITY 


Jim  inn  HIII  inn  mil  inn 

A  A      000205062 


